Warning: this blog post contains adult poo containment and cleanup methods.
I was asleep when my phone started ringing in the living room. (I keep my iPhone and iPad in the living room because I can’t resist them when I awake in the morning if they are near my bed.)
It was one of my friends. She was in an airport in China changing planes, headed home from a long-term assignment. She had pooed herself.
She couldn’t go back to the hotel. She was ready to come home. Neither could she fly with her panties full of poo smelling extremely bad. She called me because I had the same terrible experience about a year ago. It was horrific, but I had survived by executing my “poo survival protocol.”
Now, I had to teach the dangerous process to someone else.
We carefully walked through the process together.
Step 1:
Don’t freak out.
Step 2:
Get to a bath room.
Step 3:
Choose a stall with toilet seat covers in it.
Step 4:
Take the top off the toilet to expose the water in the tank. In the tank is the water we will use for clean up. The tank water has not been in the toilet. It is clean enough for our purposes.
Step 5:
Carefully take off those poo pants, including your underwear. Or slip off your skirt or dress. You should be naked from the waist down. Don’t drop any poo on the floor. Put lumpy poo it in the toilet. Flush.
Step 6.
dunk the poo underwear in the toilet to remove as much stuff as you can. Wrap the underwear in toilet seat covers. That underwear will be thrown away; it is not coming with you. It is going in the garbage. I don’t care how much you paid for it…throw it away.
Step 7:
Gently wipe your affected areas with a dry seat cover. Remove as much as you can. Wet a seat cover with the tank water. Use the wet seat cover as a small towel. Clean and dry yourself well. Use as many toilet seat covers as needed. Flush the toilet after every two seat covers.
Step 8:
If you have a carry-on bag, pull out and put on clean clothing. Skip to step 15.
If you don’t have clean pants with you, only after you are fully personally clean, examine the pants or skirt or dress you were wearing. If you are lucky, the poo was contained in your underpants.
Step 9:
If there is poo on your clothing, use the toilet tank water to dip your clothing until all poo is removed. Wring your clothing out. Once you use the tank water on your clothing, the water is contaminated.
Step 10:
Put on the cleaned wet clothing.
Step 11:
Wipe down the bathroom as best you can with the toilet seat covers. Remember which stall you used.
Step 12:
Get out of the stall. Collect a bit of soap in your hand. Go to a different stall.
Step 13:
Open the tank top. Put the soap in the tank. Take off the wet clothing and clean them again. The clothing will smell like the soap.
Step 14:
Put the wet clean smelling clothing on. You are done.
Step 15:
Report the stalls you used to the attendant. They require cleaning.
Step 16:
Stand somewhere inconspicuous to dry. Smoking rooms are great. No one in there cares about anything but the cigarettes,
My friend was clean, wet, and smelling acceptable; ready to travel in thirty minutes. (It would have been twenty minutes, but she insisted on soaping her clothing twice.) Now you know how to survive an accident in an airport and continue your travels. I hope that you never need these instructions. But if you do, poo containment can be accomplished without anyone knowing what happened. Follow the process.
Originally published at www.tonicrowewriter.com on January 28, 2019.
