Yesterday I had lunch at a mexican food place. Well, not so much a mexican food place as a place with mexican decor which sold food. If there was a mexican back there cooking, he came from one of the towns in mexico populated entirely by people who can’t cook.

Anyway, the presentation of the food was good, but the cook labored under the false impression that no matter how crappy the food was, if you shook enough hot sauce into it it would taste great. He is clearly wrong.

I’m pretty sure I was poisoned, just a little.

Anyway, I dealt with it as best I could, but coming home from St Louis I had occasion to visit many of the fine rest areas provided by the highway department for that purpose. In one, a somewhat older version with full length tiled walls and stailess doors (no doubt to prevent the installation of Glory Holes) I sat down, thinking how nice it would be if I happened to have an ice cream bar I could jam up my ass, when a groan from a neigboring stall made it clear that I was not the only person having an evening of gastrointestinal distress. The stainless and ceramic tile made the noise echo, and for fifteen minutes I listened to the sounds of what were probably large sections of the poor man’s intestinal lining plop-plopping into the bowl, alternating with the sound of gallons of water sounding as if it had been shot out of a firehose. IN between episodes he’s making noises like he’s got a basketball being inflated in his gut, and the grumbling and moaning were, thankfully, taking my mind off the flames emanating from my own nether regions.

I managed to get the situation under control- for the time being, and I reached in my pocket for the item that REALLY should have obtained, for it’s inventor, the Nobel Prize for peace- the Preparation H portable wipe.

And I find that I’ve grabbed two.

A moment of serendipity. So I finish up my paperwork, and soothe my tortured rectum with the cool power of witch hazel. I arrange my boys, tuck in my shirt, and open the door. On my way out, I slide the other sealed Prep H packet through the door of the stall containing the poor soul in question. he pulls it in from the inside, whispers “you’re an angel of mercy!!!” and I go about my business. Feeling much better about the flame in my won bowels. Hoping he survives his ordeal.