2020: A Crap-tastic Year

*Fair warning...this is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, but it is an entirely TRUE STORY. At the very least, you will be disgusted. Your nose and upper lip will scrunch together involuntarily, trust me. Okay, now that I have your attention, let us begin.

I've used a good deal of headspace in the last ten months trying to put my finger on just the right metaphor to summarize the year that we all just crawled through. A ship and an iceberg came to mind, but was quickly rejected as being too obvious. The relationship between science and masks seemed appropriate, but was also discarded because it was (sadly) not obvious enough. 

So, as this year of misery mercilessly churned towards its ending, I gave up my search. The blogosphere would have to do without the musings of one more middle-aged blowhard. I know...tragic, right?

And then, in two parts, it happened.

For Part 1, let's rewind a few months back to late September. A good friend and I (masked and distanced, so save your scorn) met for breakfast at a popular south Minneapolis cafe. My order included two eggs, cheese, and an oily sausage patty sandwiched between a toasted English muffin. Delicious. However, this not being the first time I had the breakfast sandwich, I knew what to expect shortly after digestion. Context: shortly is a window of time between 15 and 45 minutes. No less, and much to my chagrin, no more. With those numbers vaguely swirling through my mind, I drove west a short distance to Lake Harriet.

I have been a Minneapolis lakes walker and runner for decades. Not surprisingly, I know exactly where all the outdoor toilets (hereafter referred to as porta potties) are located on the paths that ring Lake of the Isles, Lake Calhoun (Bde Maka Ska), and Lake Harriet. With age comes increased use and familiarity. Just sayin'. 

When I hit the inner path of Lake Harriet's eastern shore, the sausage patty was already working its will. Resistance, I realized with growing alarm, was futile. To make matters worse, the closest porta potty was at the south end of the lake, nearly a mile away, seemingly much farther as my pace slowed for painfully obvious reasons.

Now for all you mothers out there, what I'm about to say might sound insulting ( if so, I apologize), but here goes. I think I now have a vague idea what labor must feel like because for an endless twenty minutes my contractions were getting frighteningly close. The odds of giving birth before I got to the hospital, er...porta potty, grew exponentially with each labored step.

Happily, through gritted teeth and clenched buttocks, my porta potty (at this point in the journey, I had claimed a strange ownership over the facility) came into view. With the end (and my salvation) in sight, I scuttled the remaining distance like a hermit crab seeking shelter under a vacant seashell, though I'm certain no crab ever came upon the devastation that awaited me. 

A grenade, perhaps a small warhead—maybe an entire person—had already exploded in the tight confines of the porta potty. Regardless, whoever had entered it minutes or hours earlier had easily left the porta potty ten pounds lighter, maybe twenty. Unfortunately, none of that weight loss had found its target, the incredibly hard to miss hole that everyone (or so I thought) aims for.

"Sweet, Jesus!" I gasped, trying to comprehend what I was seeing and smelling. And I thought my emergency was acute. Splattered—and I mean splattered—everywhere was a stockpile of excrement that had mass, density, and a certain viscosity that I'd only ever seen in a pot of thick, homemade chili. The Battle of Gettysburg in a 4x4x8 foot space, with no survivors.

I gingerly backed out and assessed the situation. Hiking to the next pit stop was out of question, it was halfway around the lake at the Harriet Bandshell. I'd never make it. The choice felt impossible, but I knew what I had to do. Sheepishly, I stepped forward and opened the door, determined not to leave before accomplishing my task, interior fecal carnage be damned.

Let me briefly pause and say that I cannot understate the wreckage I saw inside. It was everywhere and monumental, some might even say heroic. The square footage covered was impressive and measurable. To this day, I would like to meet whoever all of that came out of and say, "Bravo, I salute you." But at the moment, my problems were too immediate to acknowledge any grudging respect. "Later," I subconsciously told myself.

After a quick survey of my options, I noticed a small, untainted portion of the toilet seat that might offer me the access I needed. It wasn't much, but I was in no position to do any "landscaping," if you catch my drift. The previous person's coverage was nearly total. Carefully, and with one finger, I lifted the ring off the seat. It settled back against the cover with a sickening and audible "squish." That sound still haunts me. 

As I eased my shorts down and hovered over the bowl (and I do mean hovered), I was startled by the sight of more "chicken chili" on the inner part of the door. "Even there?!" I pondered with renewed shock, though the sight had the happy effect of hastening my own "evacuation" process. I tried to imagine in what condition the culprit must have left the scene of the crime, but it was a mental picture my mind gratefully refused to conjure. 

And then came a knock at the door.

I held my breath for a long second before meekly croaking out, "Just a minute." What was I going to do? There was no way I could avoid whoever was outside waiting their turn. A million awful things seemed so much better than trying to explain that I had nothing to do with this outhouse from hell. 

When I eventually emerged, a man about my age was patiently standing some distance away next to a woman, presumably his wife or girlfriend. Upon seeing them, I immediately put my hands up, as if to suggest that the area was an active crime scene and I was warning them not to come any closer. I might have even said whoa a couple of times. What I do remember saying went something like this: 

"You do NOT want to go in there. It wasn't me, but it's like a nuclear bomb went off. I can't even describe it, it's just....I mean....there is....you know...it's everywhere. Even on the door!"

He thanked me with a measure of concern and even more suspicion. I didn't wait around to see what he might do. I resumed my walk without a backwards glance, feeling very fortunate. I had just dodged numerous bullets on multiple fronts, and amazingly, escaped unscathed and was now in the clear. Or so I thought. Twenty minutes later and on the other side of the lake, there was that same couple in the distance and closing fast. I quickly dropped my head to my shoes and let them pass without a nod or hello or any acknowledgment of their existence. But I've always wondered, did they think I was responsible for that little taste of Armageddon?

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this story because, frankly, it is just too good not to share. After all, we needed as many laughs as we could get in 2020. The year, very much like the porta potty, was slathered with shit. Not the perfect metaphor, but one I can live with.

Now I'd love to be able to say that this is where the story ends, but it's not. 

A few days before Christmas my son and I drove into Minneapolis for a walk around Lake of the Isles. Like every other time I've been there, I parked at the lake's northern tip which is conveniently located near—yup, you guessed it—a porta potty. By the time we finished our three mile loop, I needed to put it to good use. Naturally, I also recalled my late September brush with infamy and began telling my son the story.

"Hold on," I said excitedly, making a timeout signal with my hands. "I'll finish the story in a minute." I hustled inside and noticed that the interior of this porta potty was identical to late September's mess with one exception, this one was spotless. And judging by the relatively "object-free" tank of dark blue water, recently serviced. 

Now at this point in the story I need to offer everyone a well-earned piece of advice. Much like texting and driving, never ever send, receive, or reply to any form of communication your phone notifies you of WHILE YOU ARE IN A PORTA POTTY! To do so is to play with fire, or worse...much, much worse.

Sitting on a toilet and looking at one's phone seems like a safer alternative than standing up, but that's where you'd be wrong, especially if you slip your phone into one of those infernal vertical breast pockets built into coats, THEN FAIL TO ZIP IT SHUT! 

To be fair, I would have been in the clear if this were a visit that only required minimal toilet paper, or if certain "concluding maneuvers" were done while in more or less the same "locational crouch" as the act itself (I really hope you all appreciate these linguistic gymnastics I'm pulling off for the sake of my pride and your tender ears). Alas, this visit required additional um....oh hell...wiping, okay? For chrissakes, as the book title states, Everyone Poops. Get over it. 

Like a flawless Greg Louganis dive from the ten meter platform at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, my Apple iPhone 8S pierced the water with nary a splash, concluding its descent with a resounding THUD on the bottom of the pool. In one swift action, I pulled my pants up, gasped loudly, and stared into the abyss wondering, "Do I go in after it?"

While the seconds—and my phone's life—slipped away, my son asked me from outside, "Dad, are you okay?" Obviously, he had heard the thud and gasp and reached an entirely different conclusion about what had happened. I stumbled out of the porta potty, the look on my face telling him everything he needed to know. "Should I?" I asked him. I'll never forget his reply:

"Don't," he said firmly. "Have some dignity." 

And so I did, though I still can't get over the impossible coincidence that I had irretrievably lost my cell phone to one porta potty while in the middle of telling him the story about another porta potty. For hours afterward, I would occasionally blurt out to no one in particular, "I can't believe that happened. I just can't believe that happened." 

But I had found my metaphor—2020 in two porta potties. The first, incomprehensibly covered in human waste and shame and neglect. The second marked by impatience and selfishness, a failure to wait until the coast was clear before a return to normalcy.

After ten long months, I still can't believe 2020 happened.