Fifteen Awkward Minutes

Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you hypothetically went to visit a friend who lives a hypothetical four hours away. Now you’re hypothetically thirty minutes into the hypothetical drive home when you realize you have to take a hypothetical shit. And hypothetically, this shit cannot wait twenty more minutes, much less three and a half more hours. This is bad news. Hypothetically, of course.

I was traveling on the interstate and so I pulled off at the next exit; there were two gas stations; one on each side of the road. I had to make a quick decision. Sadly, instead of turning into what looked like a reputable Shell Station I went with the ominous sounding “El Cheapo.” That’s right; the gas station was actually named El Cheapo. In hindsight, some warning bells should have went off at this point but I was way too concerned with releasing the demons from inside of me as soon as possible.

As to be expected, the bathroom was absolutely filthy. The stall looked even worse than the rest of the bathroom. This didn’t bode will with me because I hate away games. I despise away games. I just can’t concentrate the way I’d like to when I don’t have the home field advantage. Sadly, I had no choice here and I only had about sixty seconds to spare before the literal shit hit the figurative fan.

And that’s when things got interesting. Not only was the bathroom dirty and funky smelling, but there was no toilet paper. I stared disbelievingly at the empty toilet paper holder for roughly ten seconds. What are the chances? Apparently when you go to El Cheapo, the chances are good. Really fucking good.

I stood there, extremely conflicted, for about ten more seconds and then I had to make a decision. I realized I didn’t have the time to get back in my car and cross the street. I had to stay there, and I had to find some way to make it work. The only saving grace was the fact that there were paper towels in the dispenser next to the sink.

This led to the next problem: not only did I have to guess how many paper towels I would need (tip: always overestimate) but I had to hope that the paper towels wouldn’t clog the toilet. I could just imagine the worse case scenario: I stand up and flush and right after that someone else walks in the bathroom. The toilet clogs and starts overflowing crap-water. I would then calmly walk out of the stall and say, “How’s it going?” to the other occupant, wash my hands, and then run the fuck away from the bathroom.

Luckily the toilet did not overflow and I was able to calmly leave the store instead of running away like I just robbed the place.

I did learn two lessons from this: First: Never under any circumstances take a shit at the El Cheapo gas station; and Second: Wiping your ass with restroom paper towels is comparable to wiping your ass with thirty grit sandpaper.