I was only 11 years old when my family moved to the United States from Ghana [West Africa].
Ghana being a British Commonwealth country I had spoken English all my life with no difficulty. However, moving to America was a challenge as I had trouble getting used to all the slang and such. It made conversations hard at times because I didn’t want to look like an idiot by always asking what this and that meant.
Anyways, after I had been in the US for less than a year, summer came along and I did what most American kids do during that time – I went to a summer camp. With my youth group specifically. An eye-opening experience it was for me in many a ways. Naturally, a war of pranks begun, sometimes it was between cabin members, other times a battle of the sexes. Being new to this whole scene, I didn’t know to what extent some of these pranks could go to, they escalated during the week and actually some pretty bad ones happened but this particular one wasn’t so bad just exaggerated by my naivette … I went to the bathroom to pee and soon realized that my pee wasn’t hitting the porcelain, I stood there in confusion for a while, lifted the toilet seat and to my surprise found a clear plastic placed neatly over it. I run back into the cabin yelling “someone put a rubber on the toilet!” x 3 The youth pastor heard about this and was furious, gathered all his little junior high boys together in one cabin and was angrily questioning them, trying to find out who would do such a despicable thing, I became even more confused at that point not understanding why he would be so seemingly mad about a prank of that degree when worse ones had been going on. Later on, someone came in from the bathroom and said all he found there was a saran wrap with my pee dead center, at this point everyone started laughing. I became even more confused. My youth pastor had to explain to me exactly what “rubber” implied in that context. My confusion turned to embarrasment. Said returnee then shouted through his laughter “hey, at least it wasn’t poop”…

Frank – Ghana

I was fourteen years old and babysitting a toddler for a couple hours at his parents’ cabin. We had a wonderful time playing games and eating animal crackers. Right before his parents were due to return, he filled up his cloth diaper. I started to change him when I ran into a little problem: what to do with all the poop? You see, all the babies I’d previously sat for had disposable diapers. All I’d had to do was wad up the dirty diapers and toss them in the trash. I knew I couldn’t toss the cloth diaper, but I didn’t think I should put all that poop in the clothes hamper, either.

I knew the answer was right in front of me, but I had a major brain cramp. Where…did…the…poop…go? My mind froze and I panicked. The child’s parents would be arriving home any second. They must never, never know I didn’t understand this basic thing about child care, or they would laugh at me and never hire me again. After a few minutes of frantically racking my brain while the toddler ran around the kitchen, sans pants, I decided to try to think it through from another angle. “Where do we put food that we don’t want anymore?” I asked myself. “Aha! The garbage disposal!”

Feeling vaguely that it was wrong, but not knowing any other options, I emptied the diaper’s contents into the sink and, with a spoon, scooted the poop toward the drain. Feeling relieved that my ordeal was almost over, I hunted around for the garbage disposal switch. There wasn’t one; I had just clogged the drainpipe. At that instant, I had an epiphany: “The toddler’s poop goes in the toilet, you IDIOT! The same place YOUR poop goes!”

Crimson with shame at the extent of my spaciness, and mortified at what I had done, I hastily poured half a can of AJAX down the drain, and ran the water. I kept one eye on the clock, and one eye on the child as I frantically mashed down the remnants of poop that kept bobbing back up. I had just washed the spoon and scrubbed the sink for the hundredth time when the parents came home. I guiltily accepted their money and told them about our afternoon, omitting, of course, the diaper drama.

Apparently they never had any problems with their sink, because they asked me to babysit many times after that. I gladly did, being very careful from that point on to put human excrement in it’s proper receptacle.

The End.

Rachel – NH

To give some background, this story goes back to the early 70’s, when I was in elementary school.  At that time, the government subsidized a part of the public school lunches, which meant that each student had to pay less to buy his lunch. Because of that, the price for lunches was only $.60 and the small ½ pint cartons of milk were reduced to 4 cents each.  So, every day I went to school with my bag lunch and 4 cents in my pocket.

Another thing to know is that the boys’ bathroom had no doors on the stalls, just walls.  So, you always ran the risk that someone would catch you in the middle of you doing your “business”.

So, one day I was in the bathroom minding my own “business”.  All of a sudden, who should burst into the bathroom but the school bully.  Seeing me sitting there, he pulls out a knife and says, “Gimme your money!”  I replied, “Well, all I’ve got is four cents to buy milk.  Do you want that?”  Looking a bit disappointed, he said, “Nah, that’s alright.”

Then, he starts bragging as he pulls out all the change that he got from a number of other students.  He goes on telling me how much he got from whom and what he was going to do with the money.  Meanwhile, I’m just sitting there on the pot, listening to him, not feeling all that comfortable in doing what I originally purposed to do now in front of him.

Finally, feeling satisfied with sharing about his accomplishments, the bully left.  Even though I was relieved, I sat there a bit stunned for a few moments.  Then it came to me – “Oh yeah.  I gotta relieve myself.”  I finished my business and went back to class.

Joseph – DC

I was living in a dorm, sharing a room with several other girls. Some of them would come in late at night and leave things strewn about that I would trip over on my way to the bathroom, so I bought a small lamp to light my way. One night when I woke up and switched the lamp on, one of the girls sleepily complained that it was too bright. Thinking I’d be back in a jiffy, I hastily dimmed the light by sticking it under my pillow. That way I could still see, but wouldn’t offend anybody.

I went to the bathroom, but instead of going back to my room, I dozed off on the toilet seat! I awoke to the sound of a fire alarm and the smell of burning polyester fiberfill. I ran back to my room, from which smoke was pouring. My roommates were wide awake and very angry, my pillow had a hole burnt through it, and my lamp was, of course, ruined.

Rachel – NH