At Robot Butt, we have a constant, unrelenting thirst for knowledge. Therefore, from time to time, we like to hold roundtable discussions that explore the depths of topics that have significant meaning to our lives and the world around us. Please, join us for our latest roundtable as we attempt to answer a question with which mankind continues to struggle: What is the worst time to shit yourself?
Steve: Imagine sitting down to dinner with your girlfriend, at her parents’ home while meeting them for the first time. They are rather uptight, maybe a very Christian family, and you really want to impress them. But you had something for lunch that just isn’t agreeing with you and it comes without warning as her father is asking you about your future. You begin to answer, thinking you can make it through the situation with a silent fart. But it turns into a full-blown shit, and you get it all over the family’s beautiful dining room chairs, upholstered during World War II as your girlfriend’s grandmother waited for her husband to return from Europe.
Bronson: First thing that comes to mind is at the altar on your wedding day, but when you get right down to it, that’s nothing more than an embarrassing situation. There’s got to be a setting where pooping your pants would put your life in danger. Maybe you’re trying to sneak around a lion pack and the sudden change in smell alerts them to your presence, something like that.
Brian: If you were walking through a bunch of E. coli-laden poop and you pooped, it would probably make it easier to get the E. coli.
Just a thought.
Bronson: I just…I’m not a scientist, but that doesn’t seem right.
Steve: It would be more concerning if you walked into that pile of E. coli-laden poop after opening a random door inside your girlfriend’s parents’ house.
Brian: I feel that probably the most dangerous part of shitting yourself would be an inability to stop shitting yourself. That just gave me a good idea for a new horror novel – a man who is able to shit more total pounds than he weighs himself. Where did the extra shit come from? That will be the twist.
Patrick: In the room while your wife gives birth. At that point you should throw out the baby and start over.
Brian: Conversely, I’d like to explore the question, “What is the BEST time to shit yourself?”
Bronson: The devil bets you a gold fiddle that you won’t shit yourself in front of him.
Brian: I would love to actually hear that.
“Devil: Bet you won’t shit yourself.
Bronson: Of course I won’t shit myself, that’s gross.
Devil: What if I give you a bunch of gold in the form of a fiddle?
Bronson: Deal.”
Steve: Bronson’s been very prone to pooping his pants throughout his life, but I bet this is the one situation where he couldn’t do it.
Brian: If we could just figure out a way to make humans run at maximum efficiency, this discussion wouldn’t make any sense, since no one would need to shit. Just a thought.
Patrick: Here you go, Brian.
Brian: I love that whoever took that picture of the jug of Soylent couldn’t be bothered to clean up their table first.
Steve: Let’s circle the wagons on this – going back to the worst time to crap your pants, what would it be? Something tells me when you’re on the altar, and you turn around to grab the ring to put on your bride and you blow it so hard out of your ass that your pants rip and it explodes all over your future wife’s white dress, that would be the worst way to go.
Bronson: But when you get right down to it in this wedding scenario, you’re talking about an embarrassing social situation in a room full of close family and friends. I say there’s got to be a situation where pooping your pants earns you some serious physical harm. Whether that be at the hands of a Colombian kidnapping ring that decides you’re suddenly not worth the trouble, or as a victim of a stampeding herd of wildebeests that were startled into flight by your ripe smell.
Patrick: Comedian Ari Shaffir has a pretty good story that is related.
I think the worst time would be while on the stand on trial for defecating in public. Even if you were innocent it would be an impossible sell. Shouting “you got the wrong guy!” while ankle deep in mud.
Brian: I like your scenario, Patrick, but defecating in public probably doesn’t carry any jail time, so the stakes aren’t that high.
Steve: Let’s assume they are, though. Shitting yourself again on your first day of prison, and taking Bronson’s point into account, and getting some of it on the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood’s shoe would carry some serious consequences.
Patrick: “Depending on your prior record, a public urination or defecation charge can range from a minor misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $150 fine to a third degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail.”
Bronson: So you’re holding your wedding at a park, you let loose with some poop, the cops come up and arrest you, your wife-to-be is so humiliated she ends up leaving you, plus you lose your deposit for the reception hall.
Patrick: I don’t think that’s all that bad.
Bronson: I’m standing by either a pack of lions sniffing you out because of the poop smell, or Colombian kidnappers deciding to shoot you rather than deal with people that would pay ransom for a guy that shit himself.
Patrick: Here is what I’ve learned. Shitting yourself may be embarrassing. But it would never be that bad. The worst thing would be not being able to shit. Just the fact that you’re shitting means there is some relief involved.
Bronson: You’re a glass-half-full kind of guy, Pat.
Patrick: Just don’t ask what’s in the glass.
Shit.
Brian: Yeah, it definitely seems that the most destructive damage you could do to yourself by dumping in your trousers would be emotional.
Steve: In that regard, we might be underestimating just how traumatic emotional pain can be. Shitting during your wedding or something like that doesn’t go away. It becomes a part of you.