Bill Pooped Here - Lake Villa, IL Civil War Days

Bill Pooped Here, Bill Pooped There, Bill Pooped Everywhere!!! I think this would probably be a better title for this post since I did a pretty good job of leaving my mark all over the greater Chicagoland area last Friday, but for now I will just focus on the location that saw the most usage. It’s also the only area I managed to take a picture of, my moments at the O’Hare and Lake Forest Oasis while heading north on the tri-state so frustrating and time consuming that I completely forgot to pull out the camera whenever my butt broke free from the porcelain snare. Then again those areas are pretty well traveled so maybe the need for a pictorial image and blog post description isn’t all that necessary this time. I do; however, want to let readers know that I once again was reminded of my hatred of motion activated toilets while at these locations. Making it even worse the stalls were in high demand at the first oasis therefore I gave false hope to a desperate man every time the stupid toilet flushed. Thankfully I was eventually able to pull up some memories of the comments people wrote on my Motion Sensor Toilets - I Hate Them! post and put a stop to the needless flushing with a piece of toilet paper. After having started with the diarrhea around three in the morning in Dekalb, and then continuing with it in Wheaton at my parents house, and then all along the hour and fifteen minute route north to Lake Villa where the reenactment was taking place, it was a small, but nice relief. Short lived though since the gastrological waterslide was still in full swing.

Anyone familiar with diarrhea will know there are several different methods of arrival for this unfortunate villain of the gastrointestinal labyrinth. Sometimes it makes a noticeable fuss early on, its tantrum like cries high up in the small bowel alerting one to the fact that it probably would be a good idea to stay near a toilet for some time. Friends of mine familiar with my disease and the issues it brings call this a Diarrhea Watch (it would be a Diarrhea Warning, but sometimes it turns out to be nothing but odd gas pains, thus, the certainty of the diarrhea actually hitting isn’t enough to issue a Warning). Other times it acts like a well trained Special Forces soldier who is trying to infiltrate the pants, its skill at slipping through the lower intestines without impact making it so one doesn’t notice its presence until its almost too late. At three in the morning I suffered a Diarrhea Watch, my sleep put to an end about an hour earlier as the painful rumblings began. On the road it was more of a Diarrhea Warning, my body knowing the trouble was approaching and that I only had a little bit of time to seek out a toilet. Once I was sitting on the ground in camp at Lake Villa wearing my heavy cotton wool blend Confederate uniform the Special Forces diarrhea struck. Thankfully we were camped within pissing distance of the port-a-potties so I was able to sit down within the disgusting plastic poop booth before adding a new shade of brown to my trousers.

All through the night I was plagued by these Special Forces like attacks. First they came while simply sitting and talking with my friends. Usually I would be in mid sentence when it occurred, my statement quickly changing into one of ‘oops, gotta go piss from the butt for a while’ as I stood up from my ground cloth, my words occasionally followed by my friends joking about how I was going to be pooping out another blog post. Next the attacks came while I was sleeping. These attacks were worst of the two. Getting up in the middle of a conversation to poop is annoying, getting out from a warm layer of blankets next to a campfire in fifty degree weather to go sit in a cold dark plastic box is miserable. Doing it over and over again without any knowledge of how much time has passed between trips is downright hellish. Thankfully I did manage some sleep, the frantic trips to the port-a-potties coming to an end sometime in the early morning hours (around the third time I had to add wood to the fire if that helps). I also was able to function the rest of the weekend without any more diarrhea moments, both on the field and off the field, which was good because the crowd turnout at this event was pretty high and it would have been hard to find a break between talking to groups to use the toilets.

So, there you have it, another Bill Pooped Here moment. Hope you enjoyed reading about my adventure, and stay tuned, because with this disease, I’m sure I’ll be pooping out another post real soon. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen this Friday while I’m driving four hours to northern Wisconsin for another reenactment, or while driving back home that Sunday evening. Of course, if it does, my friends will just laugh and tell me to cheer up, I have another topic to write about. Chances are they will even try to talk me into eating something I shouldn’t just so I have material. Helpful friends I have, right?