The Irritable Bowel Syndrome Diaries Vol. 3

In case you gave me the cold scroll every day of last week, I took on a story about a loose alligator in the city. Old classic. I thought it’d last maybe 48 hours or so, but 6 days later I found myself still dedicating time to blog about a grown man named Gator Bob. Finally on day 7, I wake up to basically an Amber Alert saying that said alligator had at last been caught. They announced that they were going to be showing it to the public soon, and I knew I couldn’t not go after having spent a week on the case. No part of me wants to spring out of bed to see an alligator right now, but I have to finish what I started. Humbolito had already been caught 20 minutes ago so there’s no time for the shit shower shave show before leaving. Pretty unfortunate since I’m about to be shoving a camera in my face for the internet to see. So I jump out of bed, hit the pen, and head to the park.

Side note – I didn’t even mean to hit the dab pen. Sometimes I accidentally hit it out of habit, then next thing I know I’m violently high driving on the 90. So I have a small cup of coffee to balance things out. The poor man’s speedball.

I’m currently running to the park, trying to play it off as if I’m a morning jogger and not an adult man sprinting to see an alligator get unveiled from a storage bin at 10 in the morning. As soon as I make it to the scene I feel a MEAN one brewing. No warning gurgle, no grace period—this is a coffee shit we’re dealing with and we must handle it carefully or else we’ll scare it.

Mixing IBS with coffee is a dance with the devil every time. You start off with a 2 minute warning and that’s that. This is where boys become men and vice-versa. We now have 2 short minutes TOPS to either 1) find a toilet or 2) shit near a playground. The whistle blows.

Possible repercussions of shitting myself at this time and place:

Potential witnesses: Just every big news station in the city with live cameras rolling. Also CPD, a bunch of “Chance The Snapper” bandwagoners, and Gator Frank.

Current form of transit: I came here on foot, but since we last spoke in the previous IBS blog, the invention of the E-Scooter has come around. Love these things. They’re basically an ambulance for IBS’ers in these types of scenarios.

Pants situation: I’m rocking a pair of black mesh shorts so I’m not too worried about any visible stains, but I’d still prefer to not shit in them if given the chance.

Nearest restroom: The Humboldt Park Field House is our only chance of survival here. Day Camp just started 5 minutes ago, so I already know I’m gonna be handing out warning knocks on the stall door to children.

The field house is equivalent to city 2 blocks from the Boathouse Pavilion (where Gator Frank’s press conference will be taking place) and I’m 2 blocks from the Boathouse, totaling up to a 4 block walk to the nearest restroom. I’m hating my chances here, but I just spotted a light beaming down from the heavens on to an E-Scooter in the middle of the park. Glory be to God. I’m about to rent the hell out of this thing. 1 minute and 3 seconds until I shit myself.

So let me explain the public scooter rental process for those with cars. There’s about 10 different scooter companies in the city that each require their own individual app that you must download in order to use their brand of scooter. Once you spot the E-scooter, you go to that app, scan the barcode on the scooter, then the meter starts. It’s $1 to start it up then 15 cents/minute after that. Easy enough. It’s a 30 second process, but there’s no room for error during a coffee shit showdown.

I scan the scooter and it reads “Battery Not Charged.” Perfect. Sacked on the hail mary play. The prairie dog is already coming out for air and all I can do is twist my body in ways that will hopefully hold the flood gates a little longer. I look like a walking car dealership dummy and I’m about to be passing rolling cameras and ready reporters at the Boathouse Pavilion, so there’s a chance I may be stealing the spotlight from Gator Frank. I aggressively walk past all media and frogger it across the busy street to the field house. I ask the person at the front desk where the bathroom is as if I had just entered the ER asking for my mother’s room number. She points down the hall and I power-walk down it past a bunch of parents dropping their kids off at camp. 10 seconds left in overtime.

I see the Men’s sign in the distance and say “YES” out loud. I barge in and immediately see 2 little boys in there changing into their swimming suits. By law I definitely shouldn’t be in here right now, but IBS has the wheel. I open the stall and see a mystery liquid on the toilet seat. No time to T.P. it, we’re going in raw. As I’m finally unleashing, I hear these little punks laughing at me from outside the stall. A single fart had me in stitches when I was their age, so I understand completely. They’re probably both in the works of an all-time snapchat story of me, but whatever, no such thing as bad publicity and I didn’t shit my pants so you can @ me in it for all I care. Mission successful.

Obviously we all know that I did what I had to do here, but anyone else looking from the outside in just saw a grown man sweating his balls off sprint into a bathroom where (I didn’t know but would have unfortunately made no difference) children were changing, and then dip. So I get the fuck out of there, run back home to change my clothes that are now drenched in sweat, then make it back for the end of an alligator hunter’s red carpet event. All in all, not the best morning, but a pretty standard morning for someone with IBS who still chooses to drink coffee. Sorry for not letting my disease change me. Until we meet again.

Have you or someone you love been affected by IBS? Email me your own diary at djconrad41@gmail.com or DM me on twitter @DannyJConrad. I’ll definitely understand if you want to keep it anonymous.