My Date with D-estiny

1:20am
B-Trip: Home

Felt like 'leaving word' before bed. Some conservative columnist in LA Times writes about Iraq: "The U.S. offers the only force that can stop the country's descent into all out warfare." Hmmm....as I sit here, poop dropping out me bum, it seems to me ALMOST ANYONE ELSE stands a better chance of cooling things down over there. Perhaps we need to swallow our pride and accept that we may not be able to handle the situation ourselves. I believe the the past several years stand as evidence. Why not try eating a little crow to see if we can get the entire planet on board with fixing Iraq?

And I don't worry much about that making us appear weak. We've already established we're crazy enough to trump up charges against countries that pose no realistic threat and then conquer them. If anyone calls the U.S. a bunch of pussies, they run the risk of us doing it to them. We're kind of insane like that.

9:40am
B-Trip: Home

Morning D. Reading about the O'Reilly/Colbert swap. Colbert's best line to Bill: "A lot of people criticize the things you say, but they don't give you credit for how loud you say them."

4:27pm
B-Trip: Men's Room, Pizzeria Mozza

My wife strongly encouraged me to Take D here so that I would be forced to relay a story from a few years ago. So although D was not on my agenda, I spent our meal trying to attain the Zen-like state where D flows freely in public places.

Here's the story: Several years ago, when we were still dating, Elle and I would occasionally walk from her apartment to Trader Joe's and back. The round trip was 4.4 miles. One night, on the walk back to her place, grocery bags in each arm, I was overcome by a rumbling down below. I ignored it initially, but moments later the rumbling proved itself a force to be reckoned with. As I tried to play it cool my mind raced...judging my reality, desperate for options:

1) We were still about a mile from Elle's place.
2) We were in the middle of a neighborhood and, like Marsellus Wallace in 818, I didn't have any friendly doors to knock upon.

The first order of business was clear. I needed silence. Only then could I channel all my energy into NOT exploding out the back of my shorts.

Confused, Elle obliged. But soon, even peace and quiet wasn't enough. I was forced to explain my situation. Elle (remember: still my girlfriend at the time) laughed at first, but soon quickly became aware of just how dire my situation had become.

Meanwhile I had my second moment of clarity, and it wasn't good: There was no way I could make it home. Our only hope was an upscale pizza place on the corner or, as a last resort, a gas station a little further down. And the way things were going, even that seemed wildly optimistic.

Almost 9pm on a weeknight, it was anybody's guess as to whether or not the restaurant would be open. Still about a quarter mile away, moving as fast as my tightly-clenched buttcheeks would allow, I begged my wife to run ahead to see if the pizzeria was open. If not, I was prepared to take a crap in someone's front lawn. I had come to terms with that.

I was only about thirty yards behind her when she opened the door and gave me the thumb's up. We barged inside with our grocery bags. The hostess hadn't even finished "Table for two?" before I interjected, a wafer-thin air of informality not even remotely disguising my desperation: "Do you happen to have a restroom?" Well past the point of waiting for her answer, I dropped my grocery bags at Elle's feet and scurried in the direction in which the hostess's arm was about to raise.

The restroom was a spacious, one-person-at-a-time outfit with a toilet and a urinal. Had the door been locked, I would have barged into the women's. Had that also been occupied, the smattering of diners and weeknight staff would have witnessed a man taking a shit in the middle of the restaurant.

I was no longer calling the shots.

Mercifully, the B-trip was occupied. I yanked down my shorts and, for the next twenty-five minutes, desecrated that place. In fact, I'm quite certain I felt the room shudder as I entered today because years ago, on this same patch of Planet Earth, Mount Vesuvius had nothing on me.

As I sat here, my stomach churning and spinning and rolling vigorously enough to medal in a gymnastics competition, I cursed the decision I'd made at work earlier that day: no time for lunch, the day-old supermarket sushi in the fridge will have to do. I wouldn't need Columbo figure out what got me here.

Meanwhile the future Mrs. Pice sat at the bar, nursing a glass of Cabernet, vamping for the bartender and all else in the nearly-empty establishment who were quite aware of what was taking place.

Today's D is the polar opposite in many respects. The restaurant is packed, allowing me to slip in here undetected. The D is belligerent, digging its heels in. The effort I have to extend just to produce some "bloggable content" seems to fly in the face of what it means to Take D. D's, after all, should be easy. I manage what can only be referred to as a dainty plopner in order to take you on this walk down memory lane.

6:20pm
B-Trip: Home

This concludes the D forcibly started at the pizza place.