The Scoop on . . .

A recent jaunt in Mexico provides me with, among other things, the strong desire to write about shit.
I normally disdain using the vulgar but really, is there a better word for the product of defecation? Feces. Crap. Poop. Doo-doo. Number Two. Brown loaf. Bowel movement. Guano. There just isn't an informal way of referring to the natural product without sounding coy, childish or geekish.
And while I'm on the subject I wish to recall that during my youth we had a wonderful phrase to express how exhausted we were: too pooped to pop. Adults used it. My parents said it. It even cropped up on the puritanical TV programs of that era and was always good for a sound-track titter. Nobody says it anymore. Why? (Andy Rooney, get on this right away). I shall bring it back, single-handedly. Next time you bump into me and ask how'm I doing I will pull myself up and utter jocosely "I'm too pooped to pop". Let the chips fall where they may.
I am reliably informed by several books on the English language (for instance WORDLY WISE, by James McDonald) that the early Anglo Saxons referred to the product in question as 'squit', and that one who produced a squit was a 'squitter'. By the nineteenth century the q and the u were dropped and an h was placed in its stead, producing our modern variant. Up until then one used a squitpot for the daily double and a pasty-faced individual was referred to as a squitface. I'm not sure when opprobrium first settled on the modern word. Lazy scholar th at I am, I will hazard the guess that it all began during the Victorian era and leave it at that. For those intellectuals who would like to clean up their language, the next time you have occasion to mention someone's 'shit-eating grin' you can loftily call it the grin of a coprophages -- any zoologist will tell you that a coprophages is an animal that eats fresh dung.
But getting back to Guadalajara, which is where I'm staying for the nonce, I wish to warn all those that plan on visiting this large, smoggy metropolis that squit is frequently to be found on the gaily colored tile sidewalks. And I don't mean doggy squit. There are very few dogs here, and those that do exist are penned up behind cement block walls and never taken out for a walk. One of my chief joys in stumbling around this city is that you never see anyone out walking their dog. Mexicans don't think a dog needs to go out anywhere for any reason -- sound thinking, if you ask me. The next gringo dog that sniffs my crotch while on a leash is going to get blue added to their black nose.
No, on the sidewalks of Guadalajara you need to keep a watchful eye peeled for the human stuff. There are no public restrooms in this city and there are many individuals who make their home on the streets. The climate is salubrious and a park bench layered with cardboard is just the ticket for a good nights rest for these folk. Since there are no public facilities for them they simply squat and squit to their heart's content. No one seems to mind. It gets swept up by good-natured homeowners or shopkeepers in a day or two. But I've already ruined two pairs of flip-flops by stepping in squit that not only stays plastered to the bottom but tends to curl upward and inward, contaminating my socks and feet.
As a patriotic American I am proud to say that even a homeless wino in the meanest part of the grungiest city in our fair land can find a public restroom as easy as pie. Consequently, our sidewalks may be full of everything else under the sun but you won't find humanity's squit on it. Now that's a campaign idea I hope will be used by one of the candidates in 2008. Most likely John Kerry.
Traveler's diahrrea, as the guidebooks so quaintly call it, has given me the squits this past week or two. I contend that the confounded guidebooks need to get honest with us and call it something less cozy and more revealing, like The Cramping Death that Smells Up Your Pants. I have been cautious and prudent down here in Mexico. I touch nothing that has not been sterilized, irradiated or otherwise rendered null and void as far as rotaviruses are concerned, but still my gut has gurgled and gasped and I have hugged the ceramic bowl to my bosom, so to speak, as my best friend. As they used to say on Amos-n-Andy, I'm regusted. All my precautions have been in vain. Each meal I partake of leads inevitably to nothing but wind and sound . . . and squit.
So please let me eulogize and reminisce about that homely function that I may never get back to again, the solid morning bm.
There are many joys attending the moment of awakening each day. Birdsong. A luxurious stretch. Perhaps a loved one snuggled up against you, all pink and warm and obliging. Yes, many are the blessings of that moment to which we all look forward to. But to me the best moment of all, the crowning achievement, is the quick walk to the bathroom where you pull down your pajama pants and unload yourself. It dispells the bad humors. It rids you, the textbooks tell us, of worn-out blood cells, germs, and the undigestable fibers from last night's binge on Cheetohs and Ding Dongs. Afterwards you feel light on your feet; the fog is momentarly lifted from your noggin. Appetite stirs. Yessiree bob, it's the greatest feeling in the world you can get without illegal drugs or illicit sex. You have actually accomplished something, unselfishly given something back to the world. But the poets never write about it. Our pundits, gnashing their scrawny teeth over the Middle East or other taradiddles, never analyze it. Those talking heads on TV dare not mention it. Wouldn't you feel safer and more secure if that blathering nitwit who serves you your first dose of news in the morning on TV or radio just sat back a moment with a contented sigh and exclaimed "Boy oh boy did I have a good bm this morning"?
I tell you what, the next broadcasting job I ever get I'm going to say that word for word. Bring a little credibility to my announcing.
Then file for unemployment again.