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That magnificent deuce

On Friday morning, I had a bowel movement, plopping two small pieces, and one longer but not extraordinarily long piece. I rinsed my butt with the bidet, flushed, washed my hands, and walked away.

I'm old, so I urinate every two, maybe two-and-a-half hours, and when I walked back the bathroom, the long piece from my earlier dump was still floating atop the water.

I aimed at it, tried to carve my initials into it, and then pondered the Golden Brown Rule ("If it's yellow let it mellow, but if it's brown flush it down"). What I'd just dribbled was yellow, but the floating fudgesicle convinced me to flush, and this time I watched as it circled the bowl. My man-manure bounced and rebounded against the bottom and sides of the toilet, but when the bowl refilled, that poop was floating again.

Annoyed, I re-flushed, but again my deposit was returned. Well, I wasn't going to waste my morning flushing my waste over and over again, so I wandered into the next room and went on about my remarkably unremarkable day, and life.

When I got up to pee a few hours later, my long smooth dingy was still at sea. When I'd finished and flushed, the brown didn't go down. I began to be impressed.

On my next visit I sprinkled it again, flushed and watched, and I'll admit, I was rooting for that toilet twinkie. It tumbled and twirled and submerged, and it was almost sucked under, but then it bobbed up again. That doodoo was like Rocky Balboa, knocked down but refusing to stay down.

By bedtime I had tried flushing my morning missile seven times, yet still it persevered.

Twice overnight I peed and flushed, and by Saturday morning the bathroom began to stink, but my yesterpoop was undefeated. I thought about stabbing it with a stick and forcing it down the pipe, but — that would be dishonorable. I was beginning to respect that resilient turd.

These are troubled times, and I'll take inspiration wherever it's found, so I christened it Sir Deuce, and decided that it was welcome in my home. I wasn't going to go easy on it and stop flushing, but I wouldn't take any extreme action.

I wondered whether Sir Deuce was waiting for something — perhaps, waiting for me to understand. What, really, does it signify when excrement refuses to be flushed?

What it means, I've decided, is that we're all adrift in this life. When the undertow tries to pull us under, we struggle to break back to the surface. It can be very, very difficult to fight against the current, but if you believe in anything, believe in yourself. Even if you're standing alone, you're still standing. You are unique, you are worthwhile, and you do deserve to be here, like my dookie.

Toward its end, tiny bits of Sir Deuce began flaking off, and in the final flush it was tragically broken into two pieces. Both were swirled away, into the plumbing, destined for a facility on the south side of this city.

That piece of shit, though, had stubbornly stayed afloat for twenty-six hours, unsunk through eleven flushes, until the twelfth took it away. I've had longer, more difficult, and more explosive bowel movements, but never one more profound. To that magnificent deuce I say, thank you for your service.

 

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