Fear of the big poop

I used to be scared of taking large poops when i was a young kid. it started when I was walking down the sun bleached wooden steps that wound perilously from the house on a bluff that we used to spend summers in, down to the beach below. it was in Martha's Vineyard and it overlooked a small bay, the same bay with the restaurant the Black Dog on it, you know, the black lab logo that identifies the new england chowder wasp. It was me and my dad, i think we were going to take the sunfish out for a spin, something we used to do regularly out there. we were those city jews trying to hang in the land of 100 foot wooden sailboats and 3 story yachts. we had our huge hand-me-down cadillac with city plates, and our little sunfish. it was more then enough, though. i always felt like we were more interesting then the usual fare out there. we were "spicy".

I don't remember how the subject of pooping came up, but i think i was telling him that i had pooped so he didn't have to worry that i would need to run back up the stairs for an emergency explosion. funny thing about him, it was the kind of question i could expect from him. he NEVER overlooked those all important issues, like the toilet, or breakfast. i think it stems from his own parents, and possibly something in our jewish heritage on that side of the family. a practical approach to life, get the fundamental things out of the way before getting to the rest of life. it simplifies life and never pretends that we are above the basic needs of our body. you know, a jew is ALWAYS happy just to be healthy. its a legacy with low expectations about life, considering the odds it took to get this far, and just to have made it. la chiem.

Anyways, he always had tons of information for me. most of it in the stories about his own experiences, and lucky for my siblings and i, he knew a huge amount of history, about wars, the holocausts, politics and a lot of other interesting stuff. he was always full of tales of brave underground fighters and knights and kings. he had been a history teacher and wrestling coach many years ago in a NYC public school. that was most likely his first calling. but fortunately for us, he quit that and joined the family business. owning buildings that were acquired by a rather scary and tough old school great grandfather. but his heart definitely lies in academia. namely man's story. he was my prelude to the history channel. but this particular time his anecdote scared the shit out of me, literally. and this time the only historically relevant aspect of it was that he and i were basically the same body, just separated by 33 years. so anything that happens to him, would most likely happen to me. he looks at me after i laughed about taking a particularly large poop, and says "you know, sometimes i take such a large crap, that my stomach suddenly feels very empty and i get nauseous."

well that fraked me out. i was 5. throwing up was the only thing that scared me nearly as much as an ear infection, or very deep cold water. it was one of my fundamental enemies. i hated it and it made me cry. the feeling before it, like pure misery, and then the explosive convulsions that prevent breathing. so, by attaching that possibility to the once pleasurable, always amusing, daily act of the poop. he made it a new monster in the closet for me. i didn't poop for 3 days. i know he didn't mean to scare me. he was most likely just letting me know because it probably was funny to him that you could actually poop so much as to make yourself nauseous. it just goes to show how careful i will have to be with all my nuggets of wisdom with my own kids. whenever they show up.