Close Encounters of the #2 Kind

Sorry for being so MIA lately... work, travel and teaching have taken me away from this most worthy past time. But, I found it very important to relay one of the most amazing things that's ever happened to me.

I stepped in human feces while wearing open toed shoes.

Yes, that's no joke.

Let me tell you how it happened:

It was an unseasonably warm Wednesday morning in downtown Cincinnati. Being the industrious person I am, I tried to get in to work earlier to start my day off right. As I turned the corner from the busy rush hour street into my office's doorway, key card in hand, I smelled the most amazing smell....

You know that saying "What crawled up your ass and died?" Well, I think that's the best way to describe the rancid odor in the doorway. Unfortunately, the complete shock of the nauseating aroma caught me so off guard that I didn't notice as my foot landed in the ginormous pile of shit.

Immediately I thought: Oh shit! It's shit! Dear God! Open toed shoes...tetanus... AAAAACCCCCCKKKKKK!

I immediately pulled my foot out of my shoe, pulled the shoe (did I mention it's one of my favorite pairs?) from the steaming pile of poo, and hopped to the curb where I fruitlessly scraped my shoe against it, hoping it would easily come off.

That was not the case, since apparently the person in question had a very loose bowel movement, creating a concoction similar in consistency to cement with similar adhesive ability. I hopped into the office and into the restroom, where I went through a lengthy process of scrub. gag. scrub. gag. exit bathroom for air. scrub. gag. Is that corn? sweet god. scrub. gag. scrub.

20 minutes later the shit was gone, yet the pungent odor still remained. Luckily for me, I once had to write an article on removing bodily fluids and odors for a janitorial trade publication. (Who knew THAT would come in handy some day?) So, I filled a bucket with Lysol and laid my shoe in it to kill the odor causing bacteria responsible for the rancid odor. It worked. No more odor.

But sadly for me, I still have not recovered, and I'm not convinced that I ever will be able to wear those shoes again. Just thinking about them makes me smell shit. It's quite unfortunate.

So that's the story of me stepping in human shit. I didn't even go into detail about the overall havoc it wrought upon the office, as I was not the only victim of the foulness.... I just had the most severely foul interaction.

Ah the joys of working downtown!