Many, many years ago
I was a humble student in Motherwell. A few years previously, I had suffered from a bad case of whooping cough. When I started to cough quite badly again two years later, I was put on antibiotics as a precaution and they caused havoc with my digestive system. For 3 days I coped with the constant, gnawing cramp until I eventually realised whooping cough hadn't been as bad as this and stopped taking the pills.... fortunately, my cough had cleared up, but my digestive system still hasn't quite returned to normal and even now, almost nine years later, I get the odd cramp and unexplained bout of exploding arse syndrome.

However. Back then, at college, I was not at all used to them.

I remember that day mostly because of the pain. I had set out on the morning journey to college feeling fine, picked up my 3 passengers whom I charged not a penny in petrol money, being that I am nice, and made my way to the motorway. The journey was all going very well, the normal banter was flying round the car and all seemed fine. Then it hit me like a sledge hammer to the guts. No-one really noticed that I had gone very, very quiet and very very pale, but I was in sheer agony. By the time we made it to college, I was finding it hard to hide the excruciating pain I was in, sweat had begun beading on my forehead and I was more than a little worried..... you see, I did not feel like I needed a massive big jobbie, I just had terrible stomach cramps. I was already formulating my hypochondriac opinions as to what on earth could have gone wrong with me as we entered the building. We were bang on time. The first bell had gone, we were due in class. I gritted my teeth and prepared for the long wait until the first break.

The lecturer was late. THE LECTURER IS LATE! I knew this was my chance, and with a strained "If he get's here before I'm back, tell 'im I'm in the shunky" I jogged off to the bog. I still didn't feel like I needed to log off, but I had to try something or I felt like my lower half was going to detatch and burst into flames, so I chose a cubicle in the thankfully empty toilets, plonked myself down and braced myself for a long battle.

Almost immediately, I knew I had done the right thing. At first, it seemed as though somehow, a mighty redwood had become lodged up my bum chute at some point during the night before. I swear, it was kicking as it made it's way towards the light, and with a mighty involuntary heave, I launched it towards it's watery tomb. After giving birth to that monster, I sat there for a full minute as what felt like pints of red hot curry sauce poured from the blast zone where my poor ringpiece had once sat. When it was all done, and after a couple of minutes waiting for any further cramps had passed with no incident, I sheepishly cleaned up, flushed without looking and hurried back to class.

Next day, I had a bit of cramp in the car again. Nothing as bad as the day before, but enough to make me wince a little as I realised the lecturer was not late. I weighed up the options and decided to hold it til the first break, which I managed with ease. When the break came, I hastilly trotted off to the same toilets, looking forward to the sweet relief I had found the day before..... although I still had a bit of left-over ring sting from that episode. Being a creature of habit, I wandered into the same cubicle I had used the previous day......

And there it lay. Like some mighty felled beast, it lay lodged between the porcelain just at the water line. As many have said here before, it was around the girth of a coke can, but not quite as long, giving it an almost oblong appearance. One edge, I imagine what had been the "head", was smooth but not tapered, being as wide as the rest of the creature. The "tail" had what looked like roots extending from it, some as long as two inches. It was lodged there, a solid mass that no amount of flushing would ever shift, a monument to the massive forces that had slain it.

I left it there, had a substantially more normal shite in the next cubicle along and chortled to myself about it for the next few days.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Sat 29 Mar 2008, 16:18, Reply)