The day I shat myself.

A year ago today, on the 19th of May 2019, I shat myself on the street, in broad daylight.

I mean instant, uncontrollable, catastrophic diarrhea. Not a wee whoopsie.

I’m marking the one year anniversary of this for three reasons:

1) It’s really, really funny and we need a laugh just now. I couldn’t have imagined that the 2019/2020 would have been so terrible that the day I shat myself would be an amusing anecdote instead of the worst thing that happened.
2) You’ll make a plan for when it or something similar happens to you. Lots of people I have told this story to have now had pre-emptive conversations about making the phone call.

3) When I shared first this story on Twitter at New Year, there was so much solidarity and so many other funny stories that came up.

The day began well. I'd stayed at my mum's the night before. On my way back to Glasgow, I went for brunch with a new pal in the West End. Lovely.

I jumped the subway so that I could walk the rest of the way home and listen to my audiobook.

After I got out the station, I was feeling a bit like "Hmmm, maybe I need the toilet, maybe not."

My walk home was a pretty straight, open road. I have options for times like this. I think to myself "I’ll go into the sunbed shop and use theirs."

I carried on with my walk and listened to my audio book. It was 4pm and overcast but otherwise, the walk is okay.

The road is the main bus connection route between the Southside and city centre.

Ten minutes in, I start to think I need somewhere closer than the sunbed shop.

I'm only five minutes away from the Star Bar. An iconic pub that does a three course dinner for £2.99.

I make a plan. I’ll go in and pretend that I’m looking for someone while I head to the toilet. When I get out, I’ll sit down, have a half pint and pretend I’ve been stood up.

A minute or so later, I realise I've turned my audiobook off.

I also do this when I'm parking a car - I need perfect silence whilst my brain is laser focused on one thing. On this occasion, it was laser focused on getting to that bar.

Moments later, however, my body decided that it was not to be.

My walking pace slowed, my thoughts faded, a calmness hit me.

It started. Right there, on Eglinton Street, with nowhere to hide.

I turned my back to the grassy patch and faced traffic.

I stood and looked at a blank screen on my phone and waited for the relentless barrage to end. It didn’t.

Buses, taxis, cars and pedestrians all went past me. The whole time it just kept coming and coming and coming.

I know I've already told you that I shat myself in the street. I've taken you right up to the moment it happened.

But don't be fooled, the punchline to this joke is only being delivered now.

I was wearing shorts.

What felt like hours later I started to understand what had happened. The reality of it all, the complete lack of a reference point for where to go from here.

I was a 33 year old man, 20 minutes from home, who had just shat himself on the street in the middle of the day. Whilst wearing shorts.

I phoned my best pal and said:

"Hi. I've just shat myself on Eglinton Street."

To which he responded:

"What, do you mean you got a fright?"

No.

After minutes of just exhaling and saying "I dunno what to say", we decided that eventually I was going to have to start moving. So it may as well have been now.

"I mean, is there any of it around you?"

I checked and there wasn’t. Which made no sense. I’m not a physicist but I do know that the volume to recepticle ratio didn’t add up. Small pair of boxers + shorts +immense amounts of diarrhea ≠escaping this.

My first plan came into play.

“I’ll get the bus, there’s a bus stop right next to me."

"I'm not sure that an enclosed space you can't exit whenever you want is wise"

So I walked. In the very slow, closed legged way that makes people say "You’re walking as if you’ve shat yourself." Because I had shat myself.

I managed precisely 0.05 miles before the volume to recepticle ratio produced the results that were always unavoidable.

I had managed to come a little off the beaten track, to just behind this van, when I had an excellent brainwave.

In my bag, I had a tshirt and a hoodie. I’d wipe my legs with the t-shirt and wrap the hoodie round my waist to provide cover until I got home.

The challenge was that wiping my legs with the t-shirt meant facing the reality of what had happened. As soon as I started doing it, I exposed too many of my senses to the reality.

So then I started vomiting all over the street. A reminder, it’s 4.30pm on the main bus route between the Southside and the city centre. The blue in the middle right of the photo is a motorway flyover.

Unfortunately, my desire to always smell good meant my plan had come undone. I’d washed the t-shirt with so much fabric softener that it had no absorbancey. All it did was smear. So I abandoned that plan.

By which I mean, and I understand I may never be forgiven for this, I threw the t-shirt in a garden and moved on.

I tied the hoodie round me and began walking with some urgency. I considered rubbing grass and mud on myself to make it look like I'd been playing rugby.

With no rugby grounds within a five mile radius, I decided that'd make me look more suspicious.

Any time I sensed someone behind me, I stopped and turned side ways. I looked at my phone, then up at nearby flats, then looked at my watch less wrist, then looked at my phone again, then sighed. Like I was waiting on an imaginary pal coming down and I was fed up waiting.

When the coast was clear, I moved on. One street at a time, finding the quietest

Eventually, after turning a 20 minute walk into an hour long saga and decimating the hoodie round my waist (the hellish liquid had started to absorb up the hoodie) I got home. But then didn’t really know what to do.

So I turned the shower on and stood in it fully clothed. I took clothing items off one by one and put them in the bin.

I took the longest shower of my life and used every product to hand. I lay down on my bed for two hours and just stared at the ceiling.

Then I began phoning people to tell them what happened. And now they, like you, have a plan for what they'd do if this happened to them.

In order to investigate what had happened, I went to a guy who tested for food intolerance but he was really hot, I mean proper 12/10 stuff and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what happened. So I paid £50 I will never get back for some junk science under the banner of “just trying to be healthier.”

I’ve also come to boycott businesses who put up “Toilets are for customers only" signs. If you run a business and have a toilet, whether you are actual JP Morgan or a restaurant owner, do the opposite. It’d be lovely if the reopening of the retail and hospitality industry could come with that kind of reset.

When I shared this story, I enjoyed how many other people had a version of it. People caught on trains, at work events, while they were in bed with what they thought would be a one night stand. I also really appreciated the number of women who were like “Yeah, imagine having to do this regularly when you’re on your period.”

One of the small mercies the lack of meeting in person have brought up is that I’m able to avoid all interactions at conferences and meetings that would have went:

"I'm Jamie, I work at Who Cares? Scotland"
"Yes, I think I know you from Twitter."
"Great. Totally unrelated, do you know if it's full fat cow's milk in this coffee?"

If you’ve liked this story and had a laugh with me, please consider donating to Crohns and Colitis UK who help people deal with symptoms like this and many more challenging things through the year.