A Poo in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush?

Mr Hankey, from South Park Studios website

Let me give fair warning: some readers may find this blog post vulgar at best and offensive at worst.  So if you're squeamish about any of the words in the title, I'd advise you to come back and visit my blog another time.  Otherwise, read on, you sickos.

It's not every day that one hears a humorous anecdote about pooing in one's hand, so imagine my surprise when this past Thursday when visiting Jackson, MS, I heard about two separate and completely unrelated poo-in-hand incidents.  My husband and I traveled to Jackson to promote his newest book for middle grades, The Cheshire Cheese Cat, and we were pretty stoked to learn that our arrival coincided with David Sedaris's reading at Lemuria, one of the country's great bookstores, and the store in which I first plied my trade.

I had met Sedaris once before about 12 years ago at Lemuria for his Me Talk Pretty One Day tour, one hot July day when the power happened to go out in our building.  Trust me when I say you don't want to be stuck inside a building with no windows that can open at the height of summer in Mississippi.  It's the kind of thing that makes tempers flare and egos grow larger than the Grinch's heart after he hears the Whos singing on Christmas Day.  Sedaris, however, was as gracious as he could be to the store staff and the customers who braved the swelter to meet him, and though I hadn't read him up until that moment, I have now become something of a completist where his work is concerned, reading all of his essay collections and owning most of them on CD to enjoy regularly on my daily commute.

Last week, though, Sedaris's fame in Jackson had grown considerably since my visit with him and he read to a sold-out crowd for the paperback release of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.  My husband and I got to play the former-employee-of Lemuria card, though, and perch on barstools with the rest of the staff at the back of the room.  After reading the titular story and an unpublished essay about what he'd do if he ruled the world, Sedaris started sharing some diary entries he'd written about outrageous stories people have told him through the years.  One of them was a bizarre little tale about poo.

Apparently somebody once confessed to Sedaris that when she was in a public restroom and in need of moving her bowels, she would poo first into her hand before gently letting the poo slide silently into the water, so great was her need to keep people in neighboring stalls from knowing what she was doing.  That's right; she pooed in her hand so that nobody would hear the tell-tale kersplash of her Number Two.  But that's not even the worst of it: Sedaris found himself relating this tale among friends and fans alike, with several people corroborating that they didn't think it was odd at all to poo in the hand instead of in the bowl--and in fact had either done it themselves or knew somebody who had.  Who are these people? And do we really trust them to wash their hands thoroughly afterwards?

Sedaris's delivery is uproariously funny (and even better in person than on audio) and my eyes were bright with unshed tears from laughing so hard.  But little did I know that two hours later over dinner with friends that I would be given the opportunity to say, "Speaking of pooing in your hand..." You see, my husband and I joined some dear friends for dinner after the reading.  Over dinner one of them casually mentioned a girl she knew who had to be monitored when she went to the restroom because she pooed in her hand.  Frankly, I don't think this segue to my talking about the Sedaris event could have been improved upon.

So you must see, dear reader, how compelled I was to share these anecdotes with you.  I mean, what are the chances that I would be treated to back-to-back poo-in-the-hand stories? The odds have to be astronomically high against, right?

I think I'll close with a photo that my friend thoughtfully shared with me that I think you'll find shows a certain synchronicity: it's a photo of that day's dessert in the cafeteria at school.  Tune in next time to read how I ate my weight in cheese grits and pulled pork sandwiches and caramel cake during my trip to Jackson.

 NB: Interested in winning a copy of  Pandemonium, Lauren Oliver's much-awaited sequel to Delirium? Click here!

Chocolate covered bananas. Yum!