
I was tasked with taking my elderly and infirm mother-in-law shopping at the supermarket. She uses a walker and moves at a speed of feet per minute, not miles per hour. We arrived at the store at about noon. Unfortunately I had earlier consumed breakfast foods that did not agree with me in a very big way. Little did I know what was "in store" for me. I eventually got her launched on a slow sail through the aisles, and excused myself to the bathroom. I had waited way too long to excuse myself - putting the needs of her age and infirmity above my pressing matters. I made it to the restroom feeling a great sense of urgency. It was a one-hole-each restroom; one urinal, one enclosed stall. As I anxiously shifted weight from one leg to another I tried to negotiate with the locked stall. "I really really have to go. Are you going to be out of there soon?" The conversation went nowhere. Time was up. There was nothing left to do, so I dropped trouser right there at the urinal. Gave a quick thought to which was better - runny poop in the urinal, or in the sink. Decided the urinal was not good, but better than the sink. So I did my best to land the squirting goo in the urinal. Most went in; some wound up on the sides and on the floor. The occupant of the closed stall eventually extracted himself from the situation with no words and no eye contact. Bastard! Like many postings on this site, I hurriedly set to work cleaning up the aftermath using all available resources. Eventually the floor and urinal were clean enough that I didn't feel I'd be charged with a crime if someone connected me to the scene. I was praying that no one would come in while I was in mid-cleanup - not easy to explain. I cleaned my ass as well as I could, and performed a pretty good up-to-the elbows scrub-down on my arms. Put myself together and went back to the aisles...."Where have you been?". This was a day when her snail's pace was a good thing. Moral of the story - do your duty before you head out with the slow relative.






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