CRAP

full moon rising 2sep09

Throughout my life I've been squeamish about feces. It's probably in how we're raised, what we're taught to believe about it, dirty, nasty, the very essence of nastiness. Another way to look at it is the best fertilizer there is. It's how the animals, birds, reptiles, insects leave the earth a better place than they found it, leaving fertilizer everywhere they go. Topsoil. Their corpses are fertilizer. Not ours. We lock our fertilizer in a cement box underground. Irma Bombeck was right, the grass is greener over the septic tank. The potential fertilizer of our corpses gets sealed up tight in an underground tomb waiting for the trumpet to sound when the chosen ones break out of the graves and float up into the sky. What a sight. I hope I have my camera when it happens.


Now that I have a friend in a state of helplessness who lets go without control, I've had to get used to feces real fast. Latex gloves first. I've got to where I can get them on without tearing them up. There's a whole lot I can do now. It was a shit storm that got Jr into that Independence nursing home. If I could have approached it as I'm now able, he might have missed that 2 months in prison for doing nothing. I just couldn't handle it. It was really bad. Had to call ambulance because he couldn't move. Supercop of the Absentee Police, who was then my friend, came to the house and cleaned up the mess for me. She did it well and I am still grateful. It turned out she wanted Jr in the nursing home because I couldn't handle shit. The time he was in there, I gave it a great deal of thought. 2 months worth.


When Jr emerged from detention in my care, I was ready. I knew I could do it. And I've done it. That doesn't mean I find it a pleasant experience. It's just that it's possible now. I can overlook a whole lot. But, oh, I tell you what, it's with cussing that goes all the way back to what I learned from grandpa preschool. I try not to make Jr feel bad about causing me to cuss a streak, because he feels bad already, so bad he doesn't know what to do or say, which I honor and respect at all times. I don't stomp around and throw my hat on the floor and jump up and down on it. It's more like whistle while you work. Cuss while you deal with feces. Quietly, so no one driving by on the highway can hear me. Like the old black feller said, "If you got something good, keep it in your pocket."


I found a wesite NCBI ROFL. 2 molecular biology post-grad students at UCal Berkeley put it together. It's on the order of finding odd and comic experiments in the back pages of science journals. One I especially enjoyed was the findings of an experiment to see how swearing affects the swearor. He wrote, "Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing." It works. At the website it can be found dated August 12, 09.

http://www.ncbirofl.com

There are also findings at the site like, "How to create a zombie...and how to control a zombie outbreak." August 24, 09. Also, "Surprising study finds that little old ladies enjoy playing bingo." August 25, 09. It's a fun and funny site. Kind of an Ask Doctor Science, but the absurdity is fact, so to speak.


There is a certain humility in dealing with other people's feces, one nearly all women experience in a great variety of ways. My hat's off to them. Men get it too. Jr's best wife died of slow cancer. His friend and neighbor Jerry took care of his wife dying slowly of cancer. They got used to it. They went through it and came out the other end. The people living the most humble lives are unknown outside the world of people they live among. That's a good thing. Keeps things in perspective.


Many of us have practiced this humble service to another, all the way from babies new in this world to the elderly departing it. These are people you don't hear about on tv shows. They don't get volunteer awards and don't want them. There is something so humble about cleaning up feces, one doesn't talk about it much. Nobody wants to to hear about it. It's one of those quiet things an awful lot of people learn to get used to, not wanting to, but there you are. It happens.