Potty Humor

by Justin



Last night Ashlie went out to a birthday party with some of her co-workers. In Mongolia it is generally not usual for (at least among our schools) spouses to attend work related social functions, so I got to stay home. Friday night at the Newberry ger is pizza night and I wasn't going to let Ashlie's absence change that. The difference in Mongolia is that you have to make the pizza from scratch. It's not bad if you don't mind substituting mozzarella with processed singles. So I started making my pizza. It should also be noted that making pizza dough is a very messy process and it is even more difficult to clean without running water or someone to help you.

During this whole pizza making excursion I began to feel the urge to urinate. However, as I mentioned before it is very messy and difficult to clean without running water, so I just plowed ahead, kneading and mixing whilst crossing my legs. The urge continued to grow, but I was so close to finishing that I didn't want to wash myself off, go to the outhouse, then come back in, get my hands messy again, and have to wash off all over again. So I held it. Finally, I finished the dough, made the pizza, hastily threw it in the oven, then began washing the dough off of my hands all while doing a faster, more elaborate version of the pee pee dance. I ran out of the ger, my hands still dripping with water.

I failed to mention my footwear. I was wearing my leather, Mongolian houseshoes. I'm sure everyone at some point has slid across a kitchen or dorm hallway in their worn out house shoes, with the slick soles just gliding across the hard floor. I had the misfortune of dicovering that these soles have the same effect on soiled, wooden planks. I dashed into the outhouse.

As my right foot slipped over the wooden board, saturated with years of poorly aimed urine, I felt my body falling through the hole, into the poo pit. I had enough time during the fall to process that I was indeed falling into the hole. My good friend and fellow Peace Corps volunteer Rob, once described falling into the outhouse hole as a dealbreaker. That at that point, his volunteer service would cease, and he would quietly go home. I began to vaguely recall these words and ponder them when my body, genitalia first, crashed to the floor. You see, outhouse floor holes are merely a board removed from the floor, thereby allowing enough room for one's feces to fall through, but not one's entire body. I did find out it was wide enough though for about half of my body. And so I lay there, leg dangling through the floor, hovering a foot or two above a frozen pile of crap, face smooshed onto the aforementioned urine soaked floor. Perhaps worst of all, my Mongolian house shoe was now the domain of the poo pit, as it had fallen off of my foot.

A quick side note, I retrieved the shoe this morning using some wire and a long cardboard tube. I had no intention of wearing it, I just did not want to be reminded of this shameful event everytime I had to relieve myself. It was much the same as a defeated army trying to retake its captured standard.

Meanwhile, the urge to pee had left me and was replaced by an intense pain that was originating in my crotch and radiating throughout most of my body. I managed to pick my self up and do what I had set out to do in the first place. Afterwards,with as much dignity as I could muster under the circumstances, I waddled back to the ger one-shoed, with a cut forehead, cut thumb, cut scrotum, bruised buttocks, bruised testicle, and most of all a bruised ego.