MAR 6, 2007

Dear Joe,

I am currently sitting in the smallest room of my small apartment.  A print-out of your latest column is in front of me.  Soon, it will be behind me. 

I made the mistake of purchasing certain necessary supplies at my local co-op, which means that my options are limited to some kind of ostensibly wholesome (for whom, I am not certain), supposedly “paper” product made of whole grains, hemp, and soy, and fermented in patchouli oil, and then packaged by disabled, impoverished orphans . . . or the Office Max™ Ink-Jet Printer Paper on which your words appear.  It’s an easy choice, but my selection would be the same even if I had a roll of Quilted Northern which, given the damage the co-op brand Double-Ply Organic Sandpaper (“Now With Embedded Bits-O-Shrapnel Recycled from War-Torn Villages!”) is doing to me, may end up being my Make-A-Wish.  And, yes, I printed off your column.  I did not want to expend the energy to walk to the newspaper vending box across the street, and there was no way in hell I was going to spend one of my hard-earned quarters just for the sake of reading your prose on newsprint.  Quarters are precious, Joe.  I need them for laundry, which one needs to do pretty often, alas, when one is a "frequent pooper" such as I.  I'll give you a minute to figure out what I mean by that.

Ready?  Well, we can't all keep waiting.  So . . . moving on . . .

You are a curmudgeon, Joe.  I understand this; I realize that this is why you are paid to write a column, work which, I would like to point out, requires you to leave your home, and therefore use a public toilet . . . ummm . . . pretty much NEVER.  When you have gastrointestinal pain — that is, when your colon grumbles as loud as you do in your writing — I suspect that you have the luxury of being able to stay home and file your column from the comfort of your own couch.  You drink some Pepto, pop a couple of little green pills (those would be Imodium tablets, for those such as yourself, Joe, who don’t know the lingo, don’t know the ways, of those of us eternally afflicted with such symptoms as nausea and stomach cramps and vomiting and weight loss and, yes, diarrhea). 

And then you go on with your life, moping around the house, thinking up ways to rant for 700 words about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket approximately as comfy as my co-op brand TP, and just as full of self-righteous liberalism.  Now and then, to do a radio show or grant the public the honor a brief sight of your sour-but-saintly visage, you venture out.  On occasion, you even use a public restroom.  And I’m guessing you have a column in your head about how foul and obscene and, y’know, liberal they are these days. 

And why the hell would anyone want to use them?  And, more to the point, why the hell should government make people use them?  Er, wait, that’s not what you were saying.  Um . . . And why the hell should government make people have access to them?  Ah, yes.  That’s what you’re trying to say.  Consarnit, big government, always intervening in people’s rights to deny others a place to poop. 

Here is the crux of your argument:

The way I understand it, you might be in the neighborhood hardware store, where there is no public restroom, and suddenly, presumably as a result of a medical condition, you have to go. And you have to go now. It happens. Why, it has happened to all of us. It's just that it has never occurred to most of us to seek legislative relief or to perhaps seek card-carrying membership in the frequent pooping community.

In any event, there you are buying a paintbrush when all of a sudden the rumblings are unmistakable. Instead of going home, or to the nearest gas station or maybe to some nearby public building where public restrooms are available, you walk, carefully, to the counter and present your card. They would have to let you use the biff or face a fine.

Let me put it this way, Joe.  I do not have the option of “holding it” any more than someone having an asthma attack has the option of recovering by doing some meditative, yoga-style deep breathing.  The stuff’s coming out, and now, and how.  Y’hear?  I’ll put it simple — you like simple, right Joe?  That’s your schtick, you’re a simple guy from a simple town, who’s been turned into a cranky curmudgeon, a “Garage Logic” dude, the Angry Everyman, by this crazy liberal world.  Okay, here’s the simple version: My colon is going to fall out, and I suspect you would prefer it not happen in Aisle Four.  So I kindly ask, for your benefit as well as mine, that you allow me to use your commode.  Or perhaps you would prefer that I be responsible for the PA’s call of “clean-up in Aisle Four,” in which case I think I have a new name for such inadvertent acts acts, and all other consequences of not being able to make the leisurely stroll home to your own comfy commode (or, in simple Garage Logic terms, “to crap in one’s pants”).  The new name for this is, of course, to “Pull a Soucheray.” 

Joe, us “frequent poopers,” we really, honestly can’t go home or to a gas station.  We don’t even “walk carefully” to the counter.  We sprint, so get out of our way.  Man, if I had my way, I’d only use my own toilet — I mean, once I’ve re-stocked my TP supply with something easier on the tush.  I’d really prefer not to use the vermin-infested broom closets and mold-encrusted, out-of-the-way, overflowing, cracked-porcelain cans that pass for restrooms in some places.  But when my gut aches, when I feel nauseated beyond belief, and wonder if it's something I ate, or some moronic column I read, or just the inherently screwed-up nature of my GI tract, but whatever it is, I gotta go now . . .  at that point, I don't have a choice, and I'll take what I can get. 

Believe me, if I have the option of waiting until I can get to a bathroom that I know is moderately clean and, better yet, has the device known as “running water,” I’ll choose that.  It is not a goal of mine to try out new bathrooms.  I’m not Indiana Jones on some quest to find the Holy Pail.  I’m just a guy with few options and tons of desperation.   

If I’m in a clothing store, hey, I suppose I wouldn’t mind doing my business in the dressing room and wiping my ass with a nice cashmere sweater.  I’d imagine that would be luxurious. 

But you don’t want me to do that, and I don’t want to do that, and when you have Crohn’s disease, as I do, holding it is really, truly, I PROMISE, not an option.  And one cannot simply depend on the altruism of shopkeepers and the kindness of strangers – maybe it worked for Blanche DuBois, but in real life — where I’m looking for a starring role in An Outhouse Named Relief, and preferably not Scat On A Hot Linoleum Floor — I, and the shopkeepers themselves, desperately need a chance to get the mess out of my system and into a receptacle appropriate for such substances. 

So here’s my proposal, Joe.  You can keep your cards and your laws.  Fine.  But then I want you to be personally responsible for equipping every last shop and restaurant in the fine state of Minnesota with a bucket and a role of toilet paper.  That can be their public restroom.  Give me a few square feet in the corner, and I’ll do my business there, and you won’t have to worry about big guv’mint taking away your liberty to deny people in dire need the right to empty their curmudgeonly colons. 

I’ll even let you claim the naming rights to the buckets, since you’re going to fund them.  “Joe’s Garage” would be one suggestion.

Yours truly,

A Frequent Pooper