several years ago, marty and i were lounging on the futon watching tv. i had an abdominal pain and kept massaging the side of my gut, groaning painfully.

what's wrong?

i have this damn stitch in my side. it hurts like hell.

it's probably just stuck poop. push on it, it will help work it loose.

she never even looked away from the tv nor did she stop popping cheetohs into her mouth. it's so matter of fact with this woman. can you turn the sound up? can you pass me my drink? can you dislodge the oversized piece of feces pinched in your large intestine so i may watch my show without your distracting utterances?

where just moments before my hand was deftly massaging my side, it now hovered inches over the problem area, no longer able to touch the region. in one of the rooms of my head an odd scenario played out. in it someone placed a long, turgid cable of brown-matter on a kitchen counter, positioned a sheet of wax paper on top of it and instructed me to flatten it, using the palms of my hands. my instructor held a stopwatch in his raised hand, thumb hovering over the START button. his thumb never pressed down because my hands never rose to action.

in another room of my head, i recalled a kid who lived across the street from me that was discovered kneeling at the toilet holding a turd like a piece of sidewalk chalk, coloring the inside of the bowl. sadly, by the time he was found the majority of the basin's interior had been covered. i theorize he would have completed his work sooner had his writing instrument not been whittled down to a tiny nubbin which became difficult to handle. while your mind draws my non-rockwellian picture, i want to remind you to include the rank air that wafted from the opened door as this small child had successfully exposed nearly every molecule of methane that deep-brown floater had to offer.

as for me on the futon, i stepped up and did as marty suggested, only i pushed on my side with the binding of the book i'd been reading (sorry phillip roth) and sure enough my not-pliable-enough waste contorted its way through the hairpin turn. this story is only a fraction of what it could be because you can't see the countenances exchanged between marty and i during this episode. our faces would only have been bested by the expressions of kenneth's (the five year old) family as they crowded into the doorjamb to witness the youngest son's project first-hand.