“Evan, I’m in class and I just pooped my pants. Help now.”

Dude, you just wrote a check your butt can’t cash.

STEP ONE: Do your best to not make a face that looks like you just made a deposit. You need to get out of this classroom because it is not a bathroom. Take a couple deep breaths and think about a calm, serene, porcelain and private setting.

STEP TWO: You have to act quickly, quicker than your digestive tract just did.  You are now emanating a cloud of awareness, awareness that someone is sitting in poo. Stay here too long and your class will figure out who it is via olfactory triangulation.  Pull out your cell phone, look at it, and make the most horrified face you can muster, a very concerned, anxious face.

This is how we’re going to get you out of here. Your basement just flooded, your roommate ran over your pet, whatever. You are going to make it look like something bad has happened (that isn’t the thing you’re sitting on) and you have to leave class. Now pack up your things.

STEP THREE: You’ve carefully manufactured a perceived reason to leave that isn’t horribly embarrassing. Take another deep breath. Survey the route out of the classroom where you will spread the smallest quantity of foul cloud to fellow students. One more deep breath.

STEP FOUR: Make way for the door quickly, you need to walk normal and not like you have poo in your shorts. I understand that what you are wearing may make this challenging. Keep your face straight and that walk steady, and you may make it out of this without a soul knowing of your sudden outburst.

Or you could just tell them the truth, yeah.

ealinko@mavs.coloradomesa.edu