Mitts.

As a young girl, I was part of an organization known as The Campfire Girls. I couldn't have told you then what the Campfire Girls stood for, or what specifically they represented and meant to teach - and I still couldn't tell you now. All I know is that once a week, I would go to the house of my Campfire leader, and I would awkwardly socialize with four or five girls my age for an hour or two. Sometimes we would do arts and crafts, many of which included glitter, macaroni, and pinecones. (We glued glitter onto anything that would stay still. This may or may not have included a lethargic cat.) Other times, we would play games - the most memorable of which was a game in which our troop leader would hide a thimble out in the open in a large room, and we would be responsible for finding it without giving away its location to the other girls. (In order to indicate that you'd located the thimble, you were to shout "Huckle huckle beanstalk!" and sit quickly on the ground. Obviously.) Most excitingly, though, sometimes we would leave the troop leader's house and go on adventures around the city. We once sang Christmas carols at a nursing home. We also went to city hall one time, and we met Mayor Jack Rabbit, which was really his name for some reason that I'll never understand. The time we're here to talk about though - that time we went out for ice cream.

The ice cream parlor that we went to was the most awe-inspiring thing I had yet to encounter in my life. There was a Do It Yourself toppings bar right smack dab in the middle of the place, and to a group of five or six eight year old girls, that translates to absolute mayhem. We were served our dishes of plain ice cream and instructed to go to the bar and top them in a reasonable, responsible fashion. Oh okay, sure. Obviously, what we ended up with instead were single scoops of vanilla covered in mountains of gummy bears, M&Ms, peanuts, Jello, chocolate chips, raspberry jam, caramel sauce - I think one girl somehow ended up with a legit ham sandwich on top of her sundae - and of course everything was topped with whipped cream and seventy-three maraschino cherries. We were in heaven, in absolute bliss. Sugar-fueled, diabetic, coma-inducing bliss. We made repeat trips to reload on more candy, more whipped cream, more rainbow jimmies - we just kept going until we couldn't go anymore. There was just no room left in our tiny eight-year-old tummies to shove anymore garbage down our throat holes. And so the adventure came to a close. 

Our leader asked us each to be sure to use the bathroom before we left, because it was a long ride home. All six of us walked down the hall to the bathroom, which was just one small room. One toilet, one sink, unisex. If you need to go to the bathroom in this restaurant, you are using this one single toilet. So we do what eight-year-old girls are good at, and we get in single-file line against the wall outside the bathroom door, waiting our turns. I fell somewhere in the middle of that line - not first, but far from last. When my time came to use the facilities, I was eternally grateful. The sugar and syrup and ham and ice cream I had ingested were waging war on my insides, and I was on the verge of shitting my OshKosh overalls. I shuffled calmly into the bathroom so as not to let on to my issues, and I shut the door carefully behind me, making sure it was locked. Then I ran to the toilet, and I birthed a small, tiny, eight-year-old girl poop. I was humiliated, because I knew that whichever girl had the next turn would know for sure that I had suffered intestinal distress due to the unpleasant odor of poorly processed dairy in the air, but there was nothing I could do. I flushed the toilet... and nothing happened. The handle did not offer the tautness that I was used to in a toilet flush. Instead, I was met with a limp, loose toilet handle that did nothing but mock me and my horrendous situation. I know now that the chain had likely come loose in the toilet tank, but eight-year-old me was certain that I had broken the toilet, which meant that someone, somewhere in the world, was going to see my poop. This was not acceptable. So I proceeded to do what any normal person would do. I started crying. While I was crying, I somehow convinced myself that my tiny poop would sink to the depths of the unknown, unseen toilet places if I were to break it up into even tinier pieces. I took the toilet plunger and jabbed at my poop until it broke in two - two smaller, but still floating, pieces of my poop, staring at me in the eye, multiplying and ruining my life. At this point, people have begun knocking on the door. 

"Cindy, are you okay? Is everything alright?"

"Yes, once second" I said, but inside I thought "Nothing is alright! There is poop and it is here and I cannot be rid of it!"

Then I saw it. Just above the toilet, high above my head, was a small window that was open to the outside world. Instantly the answer was clear. I sprung into action - I crafted myself thick Cottonelle mitts, a mummy has never been wound with mitts as fine as these. I covered every pore of my hands a hundred times over - at quick glance, I may have looked like a burn victim, but actually I was just a girl with a bad poop situation. And then it was time. I reached into the bowl of the toilet and I physically removed my own feces. I plucked one half of that tiny poop straight up out of the toilet bowl. I held it precariously in one hand as I used the other to close the toilet lid. I climbed atop the toilet seat, balancing my digested food in my right while steadying myself with my left - if I could complete this task, I would be home free. Once steady, I stood on my tippest tiptoe. I reached my arm up high, as far as my tiny arms would stretch, grasping my poop firmly but gently. I stuck my Cottonelle out the window and - I let go. I dropped my poop outside. Into the world. I didn't know what was out there. It could have been a parking lot. I could have been dropping my own waste onto an elderly woman's windshield. Hell, I could have been dropping it onto an elderly woman. I didn't care. All I knew was, this was working. My poop was gone.

I climbed carefully down off the toilet, and I removed my mitts. I washed my hands and reached out for the door when I remembered that my job was not complete. I opened the toilet again and was greeted by my remaining tiny poop half, along with the paper I had used when I'd finished my business originally. And so the process began again. Mummy hands, acrobatics, windshields. For some reason, I didn't feel comfortable throwing the used toilet paper out the window though - I did scoop that out, but I threw it directly into the trash. I peeked in the toilet one more time, just to be sure, and the water was finally clean. I composed myself, and I finally gathered the courage to leave the bathroom.

The entire process took probably only five minutes, so no one really questioned me much after all was said and done. I don't remember if the girl after me complained about the toilet not flushing. No one ever mentioned to me the exorbitant amount of sopping wet toilet paper I'd discarded in the trash. I waited patiently while the rest of the girls completed their (assuredly much more standard) business, and when everyone was finished, we gathered together and left the restaurant.

I made sure to check the location of the small bathroom window as we walked to the car. I let out a sigh of relief when I spotted it hidden behind some tall bushes against the building.

No elderly women were pooped upon on that day.

Well. At least not by my hand.