The Build Up

(Please first read the post Coming Soon... to get perspective on this article)

Fast-forward one week. Or, maybe rewind two months. Either way the result is the same: my penchant for spicy food has yet again caught up with my bowels. The thunderous grumblings evoke images of revolutions, epic battles where empires rise and fall, the tide of history. Experience has taught me this is but a precursor. A prophecy of pooping. A fore bearer of feces. (An alliterative assault!) Indeed, it would be most prudent to make my way towards the restroom and weather the coming storm. Enter the bushman:

Fuck that! When that storm comes rollin' in, I'll be ready, but I sure as shit won't be nancy-ing about on some crapper. I've got work to do!

With the force and reckoning of an elephant stampede it hits. Waves of pain radiate through my stomach. Emergency maneuvers! My mind quickly searches back to first-year biology and that textbook image of the human colon. Maybe if I keep my abdomen bent the pressure will be reduced. Jesus, I should be a doctor. Another pang, god damn it. Time to get to the bathroom. Halfway there I realise I don't have my cell phone. I left it at my desk. (Why the hell does that matter?!?!) Shitting is boring. (Boredom is the sign of a boring mind). The phone has internet. You can check your email. Be more efficient. (Fine). Another truckload of pain slams into my guts. This one must be bad. Thinking I should book another appointment with my therapist (and seeing a shadow out of the corner of my mind), I turn back for the coveted Crackberry.

I finally reach the washroom, phone in hand. The pressure in my bowels is reaching a screaming crescendo. Pressure equals density times gravitational acceleration times the height of the liquid column. My body was not meant to handle forces of this magnitude! Nimbly ripping my pants off, palms sweating, phone in hand (I've done this before), I sit down on the toilet but moments before my body finally gives way to itself. Whew! I can now safely surf the net while my body rides out the tremors from such an extraordinary tectonic upheaval. Between checking the latest headlines on NYTimes.com and my Gmail account, I realize I almost shit my pants to get my cell phone! Since when did my technological needs supersede my basic bodily functions? So much for Maslow's pyramid. It's been put on its head! The true definition of an addiction...