Messy Mistakes

During a recent military field exercise a gentleman publicly displayed poor judgment in the use of standard operating procedures for porta-john use at night.  The incident stemmed from not trusting the advice of his peers that the gum issued in MREs had laxative properties.  This mistrust of others and his stubborn ways allowed this mistake to aggrandize into a yarn woven into Battalion folklore for years to come. 

This gentleman’s strong distrust of others and obstinate nature pushed him into proving a point that the gum was not a laxative and eating his and three others’ gum packs from the MREs.  In his pursuit of being right he would not allow himself to admit that his bowels were in disorder and would need a restroom break before the finish of his watch.  Upon finishing his watch the gentleman of interest rapidly marched to the nearest porta-john .  Arriving at the porta-john he realized that in his haste he did not bring a flashlight (he worked the nightshift).  Not having a flash light prohibited a visual inspection of the facility.  This is a grievous error, it is common knowledge that there is a large segment of people that do not practice bathroom etiquette in porta-johns and inspections must be conducted to minimize certain contamination.  At this point the intestinal disorder was too great to be concerned with proper procedures and the gentleman proceeded to disrobe and take a seated position for the task at hand.  It should be noted that one should never park in a hover zone.  This rule was quickly reinforced when the gentleman plopped down on to excrement that lay in wait on the seat. At this point the mistakes began compounding and the omission of the visual inspection delayed the realization that there was not toilet paper in the porta-john.  This gentleman was resourceful and devised a substitute for the missing toilette paper by removing his undershirt and tearing it into strips for cleaning.

This chain of mistakes did not conclude here, it continued its exponential growth.  Left with a pile of soiled undershirt he decided the best way to dispose of this nasty rag pile was to put it down the hatch into the porta-john.  The gentleman then went to bed thinking this horrific event was over and none the wiser, but it was only going to get worse.  For those that are not familiar with porta-johns a vacuum truck is used to remove the waste, but the vacuum truck can only accept toilet paper and  the human waste all other materials are rejected.  Included in the rejected items was the gentleman’s undershirt, which had his name stamped on it.  This name stamp was a remnant of Officer Candidate School and boldly stated who it belonged to and was promptly spotted by the Executive Officer during his morning rounds.  This caused the culmination of mistakes, spilling your guts to the Executive Officer as to why your undershirt was in the porta-john waste while in the earshot of all the Troops.  As is the case with all embarrassing stories it spread like wild fire throughout the Unit.  To this day he is unofficially known as Lieutenant Poop Pants and gifts of toilette paper rolls are left in homage outside his office door.