No one suavely shits themselves. There is no diverse range of emotions a person experiences from losing control of their bowels. You are either a baby, pleased with yourself for being able to defecate in the middle of a department store and get away with it, or a horrified adult wondering how quickly you can start a new life in another country. Even though we are all humans that have been through these exact scenarios, it is no less mortifying when you reveal to the world that you are not properly house trained.
Shitting yourself is social suicide. You will be removed from establishments and ruthlessly made fun of for the rest of your life. Should your intestines going rogue ever become common knowledge, no one will ever truly forget. For example, a great way to decide who goes first in a card game is to start with the person who crapped themselves most recently. So, just when your friend’s diarrhea jokes finally subside, something as innocuous as a card game is here to stoke the flames of your butt’s failure all over again. But, hey, at least you get the cruel consolation prize of getting the first turn in Monopoly.
As far as common human fears go, this one is pretty high up on the list. We all have stories of frantically driving home or running through a mall, trying to reach our destination before our stomachs explode. I have long thought that anyone who is speeding on the freeway is really in a race against time to get home before they lose control of their bowels. It’s basically the plot of the movie Speed. If you stop moving, the bus explodes and Sandra Bullock will be furious.
To say that I am afraid of shitting myself is not a bold statement. Nobody wants to shit themselves. This is common knowledge. But what makes this my worst fear is the scenario surrounding the shitting. If I am sitting in the middle of the ocean, strapped into my wetsuit when the Taco Bell befriends the coffee in my stomach, my anxiety ratchets up thirty-seven notches. Instead of staring down the meager loss of soiled underwear and perhaps a pair of pants, you now risk not only losing a couple hundred dollars worth of neoprene, but also knowing that your poop may begin to circulate around inside your wetsuit. Pair this with needing physical exertion to even begin the search for a bathroom and my hands begin shaking uncontrollably.
That’s what makes this my biggest fear: the potential humiliation faced and the lengths required to go through to avoid humiliation.
Jack O’Neil is mostly to blame. He created the wetsuit not to contribute to nightmares, but to help people achieve their aquatic role-playing dreams. These skin-tight neoprene onesies made it possible for surfers and seal-play enthusiasts alike to splash around in chilly waters for longer periods of time. It was revolutionary.
I wanted to surf for as long as possible year-round and, thanks to Mr. O’Neil, I am able to do so. Many of these sessions I spend alone with my own thoughts. And when you’re out on the water, by yourself, letting your mind wander, you eventually run into some thoughts that make you concerned – getting bitten by a shark, stabbed by a stingray, or wondering if present-day David Hasselhoff will start running down the beach dressed as 1991 David Hasselhoff. And eventually, I wondered – what if I desperately need to poop?
If I was in the middle of nowhere, it would be socially acceptable to drop-trou behind a bush and let that be that. Nature calls, as they say, especially when there is no indoor plumbing.
But it’s not that simple when you are in the middle of a crowded city beach break with scores of smartphone-wielding citizens around and no Hasselhoff there to distract them. There is no easy way out of this. You, the Odysseus of this poop ship, must set out on an arduous journey to find a bathroom.
You must first navigate your way out of the ocean while fending off the victory at sea conditions in your stomach. But making it to shore is not a triumph, only a checkpoint in your journey. You still need to locate a bathroom. This may require a walk or a short car ride. Regardless of how far you actually need to travel, the journey will feel 20 years long.
Then, you will need to get out of the suit. While many emergency situations necessitate panicked undressing, you can’t just rip your wetsuit off like a pair of track pants and expect to quickly get down to business. Removing a soggy wetsuit involves some David Copperfield level trickery. You have to shake, squirm, pull, and gyrate your way out of the thing (all the motions you do not want to be doing at this moment), while simultaneously making sure to keep your nether regions concealed to the family of four that just parked next to you.
Quickly removing a wetsuit under pressure is the ultimate magic trick. An ABC special of Copperfield attempting to escape a burning building in a straitjacket is fine. Strapping him to a rabid wildebeest would make it impressive. But I would much rather see him get hammered on a Saturday night, eat multiple carne asada burritos, and try to remove a saturated wetsuit from his person before his lower half turns into a shit-stained hellscape. That takes the skill of a true magician to master.
So, after enduring an eternity of paddling, searching, and suit removal via sorcery, you can finally waddle your way over to the bathroom and hopefully, maybe claim victory. Fuck that entire tortuous scenario. The whole thing reeks of a Jackass skit I want no part of.
I would much rather be a part of a nuclear war or zombie apocalypse. Prerequisites to survival in both situations are that you need to be smart, savvy, and good with a short-ranged firearm. Despite my college degree and extensive video game murdering credentials, I possess none of these traits. So I know it would all be over fairly quickly for me – which gives me a lot of comfort. In an end of days scenario, I would not suffer long.
But you don’t immediately die after you poo in your wetsuit. You have to continue the rest of your life with the world knowing that you momentarily existed in your own feces. It’s an eternity of embarrassment. You never have to worry about your friends reminding you of the time a zombie feasted on your brain every couple of months; but then again, in a zombie scenario, you will have most likely devoured your friends by that point.
When I enter the afterlife a bad man who has done many regrettable things, I will surely be met by the Devil with a 3/2 dangling from a prong on his pitchfork. He will hand me the wetsuit, a burrito, and a strong cup of coffee. In the distance, he will point to the most immaculate point break any man has ever seen.
“Go,” he will demand, gesturing towards the wave.
I will take a bite into the burrito, only to find it is a five-pound shell filled 50% laxative and 50% Tapatio. As I paddle towards the waves, my belly begins to twerk, gyrate, and groan. Meanwhile, on the shore, every person I have ever met in life will start to wander out to the sand, observing my every move.
The Devil will begin to cackle. He knows what hell he has wrought and he is a proud creature.