WARNING: This blog contains explicit subject matter that may travel beyond the boundaries of good taste … And it is like really, really long! Engage at your own risk.

I have never been the sort to announce my own birthday — especially in the workplace. I mean … you never know what someone might do with the information. My partners in a PR firm years ago blindfolded me and took me to Hooters. Who wants to go to Hooters blindfolded? Anyway … you never know what humiliating things people might do, attempting to make you feel special.

But, after the other night — my birthday spent on the night shift of yet another Dirty Gig — I will probably make darned certain EVERYONE knows it is my birthday in the future — well in advance. From now on, bring on the special treatment.

You see, when I got to the Boston jobsite the other night I was tightlipped about my big day and it proved to be one of the worst decisions of my life … hard to narrow that down among so many examples, but yes … it was up there near the top.

(If you have not been following along, I am helping to rip out water soaked walls in a ritzy high-rise apartment and preparing the apartments for the new construction.)

My silence backfired because I was given “a special assignment” that, as described to me, might rival anything seen on the hit TV show “Dirty Jobs.”

My mission — regardless of whether I decided to accept it — was to move a commode that was unhooked in one of the empty apartments. With a little common sense, no big thing for a disaster recovery worker. However … big however … someone was so moved to use the porcelain throne — even though it was no longer hooked up. Can you believe humans do stuff like this?

Man … I can’t imagine what the first person who discovered this little treasure might have thought. I do know what they did. Ha … They wrapped the commode with a couple of really large, industrial strength trash bags. Oh … then they forgot about it … and apparently forgot to tell anyone. So, this little airtight bag of goods was allowed to — for a lack of a more gross word — ripen … somehow undetected … don’t ask me how … until … MY BIRTHDAY!

Well, surprise surprise … when the discovery was made, the day shift unanimously selected the night shift (me) to handle it.

So … when the boss told me about this special assignment, I spilled the beans here in Boston. I said, “Gee thanks and by the way … this is my birthday.” I really wasn’t mad or anything, but I thought it was fun to see him squirm a little. I do appreciate irony and coincidence … even when I am the butt of the joke. By contrast, another colleague on the job had a birthday two or threes day prior. In her honor, everyone ate huge, chocolate-covered cupcakes until they passed out, I think. So I had a little fun with the boss, making him aware that my all-night birthday celebration would be marked with dismantling “a dirty bomb” … perhaps one of the most memorable of my entire life! Not good. Memorable.

Let me stop right here. I said I would never do it. But this is at least the second time on this blog that I have resorted to telling a poop story. It is sophomoric. It is in poor taste. And, I am on record as being staunchly against such foul humor.

But, when someone dealt this deck, and I got the “death card” so to speak … I had an opportunity to seek a new career … throw a fit and make some other poor soul do it … or I could make the best of the situation and then piece together a blog about it if I survived. (The phrase “make lemonade from lemons” came to mind … but knowing what I know now … it did NOT apply.)

This might be a perfect blog for the section of PingWi-Fi.com called “Blogs About Nothing.” (Check that out if you have time.) Usually the writings at this site speak of Wi-Fi, travel, music and/or sports. But sometimes the blog is about nothing. This, the second poop saga from PingWi-Fi certainly should fit in with other rants about the meaningless, yet bizarre events in life.

Hmmm … this one, I think I will call “Much-a-dookie About Nothing” with apologies to Shakespeare. Or “Bathroom Humor Take #2” … “Or Gross Encounters Of The Number Two Kind” …

I digress …
Ping was charged — birthday or no birthday — with loading up, transporting, unwrapping and disarming this rank potty payload. I mentioned the day crew — about 75 people came to the consensus that this was a task for me. I failed to mention I did have one other partner in this crime against humanity. One temporary laborer helps me each night. Not only had I not told the worker about my birthday … NO WAY was I going to divulge to him what our night would entail. I have worked with part-time workers long enough to know they have no reservations about fleeing the scene when we have to deal with “weapons of mass destruction” like the one we were about to destroy.

At the start of our shift — around 7 p.m. — I told him there was a little surprise in store for us at 3 a.m. I think someone leaked to him it was my birthday. His gears were turning. I could tell he was thinking about Hooters and blindfolds, if not the nightclub down the street. We should be so lucky.

Three a.m. came, and I met him in the supply room. Laid out before him, I had a gaggle of trash bags, Latex gloves, respirators and more. It looked as if we were preparing for surgery or a forensic investigation of some sort. (Hmmm … that is probably a pretty close analogy.)

We grabbed our supplies and rolled a demolition cart to the freight elevator — working in the wee (wee) hours to keep our mission covert. No one should know things like this happen … On the trip up the elevator, once the doors were closed, I shared details. I thought my friend was going to pass out. I passed along the 4-1-1 I was given. This thing … this package had been deposited, sealed up and left to germinate for more than a week. No other humans had seen what was inside, or at least none who had lived to tell about it.

Like many who become apprehensive in an uncomfortable situation, I attempted to clear the air with humor. I told him I felt like we were archaeologists, about to open the bowels of the Great Pyramid and force open the doors to the secret chambers, and remove mummified remains, wrapped air tight for who knows how long. (Hey, so I watched a lot of PBS programming in my formative years …) I warned him of the “curse of the dookie.” He was not amused.

We arrived and found, shall we say, the “porcelain sarcophagus.” We were terrified. What if, heaven forbid, this thing inside the black plastic and what was once water were overflowing or even filled to the brim. We have to pick up the potty and lift it up over the side of the demolition cart — about five feet high. What if we dropped it and porcelain and payload exploded all over the place and more importantly all over us?

Me personally, I saw every movie — and more specifically every Three Stooges episode — ever made pass before my eyes … scenes where someone accidentally dropped some gooey, foul substance and was covered with badness from head to toe. I think, if given a choice, I would take the curse instead of the splash. Can you imagine?

I was also reminded of the immortal words of comedian Richard Pryor: “The funk knocked me to my knees!”

Our brows beading up with sweat behind our respirator masks, we successfully lifted the commode and placed it in the potty wagon. Carefully, we squeeze it out … you know the cart … through the apartment door. We made our way to the freight elevator without any of the tenants seeing us. (Half of the building was unharmed by the water damage, and this young affluent crowd apparently parties all night …)

We made our way, unnoticed, until we arrived at the loading dock. At the dock was an industrial drain which would soon be the unlucky recipient of our dirty bomb.

Dang it! We were not alone. No, the thing encapsulated in plastic had not come alive. (I watched me some Sci-Fi in my days too …) Standing at the loading dock were two night security personnel and an off-duty police officer.

I won’t lie. I enjoyed it when I walked up the three, looked directly at the officer of the law and said, “I am sorry gentlemen. I’m afraid you will want to evacuate. (Get it?) We are about to turn this seemingly innocent loading dock into a crime scene. So I am afraid you will want to exit the premises.”

“What?,” they smiled.

“You might want to extricate yourselves from this situation, gentlemen. You see, we are in fact transporting truly, truly hazardous waste. Someone left a ‘dirty bomb’ in a toilet and they have called in the birthday bomb squad to dispose of it.”

The officer and the two security guards ran away through the open overhead door screaming, firing pistols into the night. Well … not really, but they made haste to get out of there. I closed the overhead door, not wanting to subject innocent passersby to this ugly scene.

We lowered the cart and its unholy contents on a loading dock lift, down to the drain. Cleverly, I thought, we placed the poop-filled pinata atop the metal grate of the drain, and without unwrapping it … tore a hole in the plastic, opened the lid to the tank slightly and stuck in a steaming hot water hose.

(I should have used the Richard Pryor quote here to describe the funk wafting through the protective barrier of my respirator.)

Quickly, with the precision of a surgical team, we inserted the hose and irrigated the gaping cavity or tank of the toidy.

Always the role-player, I glanced over my mask into the eyes of my assistant, also wearing a mask … “Scalpel!” I demanded. (This was not intended to be foreshadowing …) For the first time all night … he cracked a smile. Hmmm … he is obviously into medical humor, I thought. In my most nasal voice, I imitated the TV commercials of the old children’s game, “Operation.”

“Remove wrenched ankle …” No disciple of Milton Bradley, I could tell, so my attempt at humor was lost on this youngster …

Finally, the tank was full. Unceremoniously, we could merely “detonate” by moving the handle and flushing the bowl. Ha … This is PingWi-Fi and unceremoniously is not the way we roll. I started the countdown, and my colleague played along this time. “Ten … nine … eight …” You get it.

I flushed it. “Houston we have lift off!” I reported, mixing yet another metaphor. Then I slipped back into my medical persona … “Again!” I shouted as if we were about to shock life back into a stiff.

Well … we flushed the thing four or five times, taking particular caution to avert our eyes, with no desire to know too much information.

Finally, the moment of truth. We had to remove the protective layers so carefully bound around this john. And yes … someone had to open the lid and get a status report. “Oh you lucky birthday boy, you,” I said to myself. It had to be me. I tiptoed up to the toilet. I have really long arms, and I used every inch to distance myself from this evil thing, as I opened it ever so slightly.

LOL … I peeped inside and slammed the lid closed and screamed to my co-worker … (I really did) “IT’S STILL IN THERE! STILL IN THERE!”

He was pale as a sheet or whatever the expression is. But kudos. He stepped up to the plate … or the pot in this case and propped the lid open …

And then ….

He started laughing loudly. Had he cracked? Had this been too much and pushed him over the edge?

“Ha … it’s a knife!”

The odds are, knowing me, I probably made prison jokes, saying “I bet that hurt” when someone passed that … but I’d like to think I did not. Simply can’t remember … I digress …

Do you know the scene in the film “Caddyshack” where someone detects an uninvited submersible in the swimming pool at the country club … and the kids flee for their lives … and then in protective garb (prolly a Tyvek suit as I have learned in the disaster industry) Bill Murray’s character extracts this log-like contaminant from the water? What does he do?

Ha … to the horror of all … HE EATS IT … having discovered the dirty little package he was dealing with was actually a slightly chlorinated Baby Ruth candy bar first floating in the water and then as the pool drained, dry docked at the bottom of the pool.

Well … I felt a little like Bill Murray’s character. I mean, I didn’t do nothing crazy … but, you have no idea how relieved I was. Yes … it was a construction worker’s utility knife. Ever hear the expression “He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed,”? That saying was directed toward this guy. The guy who put a knife in the toilet. Not to mention, someone put some other things in there too …

One last metaphor … In a moment of genius, not unlike MacGyvor and also strongly influenced by all of the chopsticks action I have seen during my three weeks in Boston’s Chinatown … I grabbed two strips of discarded aluminum, improvising and reached into the bowl and clamped the knife … pinching it with the two pieces of metal. (Yes, I DID use the term “pinch” in a poop story … Sue me!) You know, I think this was actually when I said “Remove wrenched ankle,” … It’s all running together now as I retell.

Game over! … well almost. There was one more little score to settle. The next morning when he greeted me, the boss still looked as if he had sentenced me to the gallows. I knew he felt really bad. As I told him the night before … “Well, somebody has to do it …” (Can I just say that is a really stupid cliché? …)

On the morning after, the boss said, “Well how did that thing turn out with the toilet?
“That thing? THAT THING!?!” I thought.

“Oh, it was okay … But get this … it wasn’t nearly as bad as we all thought it might be. Someone had actually dropped a knife in there, and apparently, it had been mistaken for worse things.”

My assistant derived particular joy in retelling to the boss how I screamed “It’s still in there!” and that it was only a knife.

Anyway … I told the boss … “No big thing … a knife causing most, but not all of the problem.”

I turned to walk away … But stopped and said, “But man … I was so relieved it was just a knife floating in that gross water … I guess I got excited, and for the life of me, I cannot remember where I put that knife.”

I walked away and headed to my hotel, leaving the boss with this horrible look on his face. You see, after breaking the seal on this toilet tomb and extracting the artifact (knife), and cleaning the commode … I still had a little extra time on my hands … (and hopefully nothing else after many, many doses of hand disinfectant.)

With that extra time, before the boss arrived for the morning shift … I grabbed another dark-handled, well-used, utility knife from the supply office. I sprayed some fresh disinfectant on it … making sure it was wet and looking as if it had recently been cleaned, slightly. I placed it on my boss’s desk that was otherwise pretty much clean and orderly … and yes right beside his keyboard, I laid the knife. He couldn’t miss it.

Not a bad birthday after all … at least from a blogger’s perspective.

Know what I sayin?