Alan and I were 12 hours into a roadtrip this spring when – having exhausted all reasonable topics – I asked, "What percentage of people do you think have pooped in a car?"
To his credit, without missing a beat, Alan simply said, "I wouldn't even know how to begin answering that."
"Pretend it's an interview question," I suggested. "You know – like how Google asks people impossible questions just to understand how they solve a problem?"
After a pause, Alan engaged. "OK. So I think we need to put some parameters around this, because I've got to assume that pretty much every baby has shat in a car. Are you specifically asking about adults? Pooping in a car as an adult?"
"Yes. And you raise a good point. I think we need to narrow the age range, because after a certain age it's probably pretty likely you're going to start doing it again. So maybe we say between the ages of 16 and 65?"
"You're talking about people shitting themselves, right? Not using a toilet in the back of a bus or an RV or something?" he clarified.
And with that, we were off to the races. It's only in hindsight that I realize I was preoccupied with the wrong question. Had I thought to explore something more useful on the topic of cars and poop, I would've added four more letters to my question. I should have been asking, "What percentage of people have pooped in a carport?" But those were more innocent days.
...
I live in Richmond's historic Fan District. The streets are generally lined with some combination of row houses and standalone homes that date back more than 100 years. Unlike many of my neighbors, I'm fortunate to have off-street parking with a covered brick carport in my back alley. Until Friday, I viewed it as a massive asset because Рin addition to parking Рit provides a nice spot to throw a party if ever the weather doesn't cooperate for an outside soir̩e.
While I've been viewing it as something of a "bonus room," apparently someone else had similar thoughts – but in a very, very different direction, as I discovered on Friday morning.
I started that morning with a pep in my step. It was almost the weekend. It wasn't raining for the first time in a week. It wasn't miserably hot. I was off to meet friends for pickleball before work. Life was grand.
... Until I swung open the gate from my backyard to my carport and saw pages of a book crumpled up and scattered across the pavers next to my car. Thinking one of the recycling bins in the back alley may have lost its lid, I naively walked over, intending to tidy things before heading to pickleball.
And then the smell hit me, and the penny dropped. This was not some random litter that had blown into my carport. This was makeshift toilet paper and it was covering up a pile of human excrement. Right next to my car.
At some point in the night, someone had ducked into my carport and let loose. I'd like to think it was a case of gastric distress, with someone facing a panicked emergency seeking out a relatively private spot to find relief. I imagine a poor college student with undiagnosed IBS wondering what hit him, as he scrambled through his book bag looking for something to clean up with, finding only his tattered and underlined copy of Camus's "L'Etranger."
While I'm clinging to that – dare I say, optimistic? – version of events, my worry is that my carport has just been designated as a public restroom by the people who panhandle at an intersection a few blocks away. Abiding by the "broken windows" theory, I was quick to clean the mess and bleach the floor of my carport.
As I cleaned, I couldn't escape the harsh blaze of the motion-detector floodlight above me. Which made me wonder: had the person who squatted there waited for the light to time out, or had they been spotlighted as they shat? It seems like illumination would have offset the privacy the person sought – but depending on the level of emergency, perhaps it was a situation where there was no room to adjust the plan once it was underway.
Later in the day I traded notes with the previous occupant of my house for an unrelated reason.
Her: How are you doing?
Me: Great, other than someone taking a dump in my carport last night!
Her: Oh, that happened to us when we lived there too!
Me: Once or multiple times???
Her: Just once. Right before we moved. They wiped their butt on my husband's car.
Say what?! How is that even possible?
I guess the lesson here is this: it could always be worse. I could now be driving a Prius with pinstriping. I'm just lucky this person had a book in their bag, and that they were willing to part with a few pages, though it certainly brings new meaning to the phrase, "shitty taste in literature."
...
I bet Alan is already dreading our next roadtrip.
