Everybody Poops

One of the things I love best about blogmania is that anything goes. If you have a pet idiosyncrasy or obsession, chances are, a blogging community somewhere out there has dedicated itself to analyzing the intricacies of the situation. A personal result of this phenomenon for me is that my knowledge base in several unrelated categories has blossomed through random link surfing, these categories including but not limited to knitting, Mormonism, the expanding effects of pregnancy on one's hooters, proper bicycle care, Canada, how best to recover from kidney-donation surgery, and various and sundry other pockets of knowledge that are guaranteed to save my life in certain precarious situations or at least make for interesting small talk someday.

Today my wanderings brought me to Dooce, specifically to this post from last November, in which she waxes philosophic about her recent 4-day respite from constipation. I found the post funny--laugh-out-loud funny in parts--but felt no real connection to the topic (being violently lactose intolerant, I am far more familiar with the 'Clench-Cheeked Poop Sprint' than the '4th-day-with no-action-and-I-can-no-longer-fit-in-any-of-my-pants-dear-lord-someone-help-me-birth-this-battleship phenomenon,' to borrow phrases from a commenter there), so I was astonished, floored, to see that her post had received 546 comments in three days. Apparently this is much more of a problem than I ever realized. I always figured the magazine rack in the bathroom was just for decoration.

So, consider the above link a public-service announcement for anyone interested in reading 546 people's advice for 'making sure the browns make it to the superbowl.'

I did find one piece of advice shiveringly accurate. I had never realized it before, but in a "now that you mention it" sort of way, I agree 100%: going to bookstores, especially second-hand bookstores, makes you poop. Ohmigosh. This was like the first time someone said out loud to me, "asparagus makes your pee smell funny right after." It was like this lightbulb going off in my head, flags waving, buzzers sounding, the giant scoreboard lighting up to read "this is one of those small but significant truths of life!" Flashbacks to bathrooms stalls everywhere, my nose crinkling up, thinking inwardly, "what is that smell?", my complete knowledge of the floorplan of every Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, B'Dalton and Half-Price Bookstore I've ever been in, including the location of the bathroom. It's uncanny, like Jason Bourne's innate knowledge of how to maneuver effectively in a high-speed car chase, dodge a stalker and perform martial arts. Perhaps I have been trained by the CIA in top-secret international bookstore plumbing espionage. Pardon me, I must find a book in that section waaaay in the back, "dentures and prosthetics"...