Several days ago, I made a choice. Didn’t seem like a bad choice at the time. I strolled into a fast-food joint on 42nd Street, The Big Apple, for a fried chicken meal with potatoes, coleslaw and biscuits. What subsuquently happened was not so much a meal as a hostage negotiation between my digestive system and fried poultry that had could have been marinating since the January 6, 2021 invasion-attack-attempted-coup-on-Congress.
I’ll spare you the play-by-play. I won’t spare you the metaphor. My body became Grand Central Station, if Grand Central Station only ran express trains, and all of them were going one direction, and none of them allowed time to buy a ticket.
For 72 hours, my Jersey City bathroom became the site of a pilgrimage. I visited it the way medieval peasants visited cathedrals — frequently, urgently, passionately and with the distinct sense that an Higher Power was punishing me for my sins, a combo fried chicken meal plus a free coke. So I hope you will forgive me — you, my fellow travelers, my brothers and sisters in gastrointestinal arms — if today, this ordinary day, I find myself standing in quiet reverence before the toilet bowl, gazing upon something I never thought I’d miss: A bowel movement that behaved.
Ode
Oh bowel movement, formed and whole, you eventually arrived with dignity and control. No sirens. No sprinting. No frantic little dance where I calculate bathroom distance like it’s underpants-based advanced physics. You simply… showed up. Once. And left. Like a polite dinner guest, not a home invasion.
Oh bowel movement you had structure. You held a shape, the way a proud building holds its architecture, the way a soufflé holds air, the way my dignity did not hold, three days ago, on that Q train platform, when I genuinely considered whether the subway bathroom situation had become a medical emergency.
Oh bowel movement you were not accompanied by: a cold sweat, a prayer, the specific panic of Google Maps-ing “nearest Starbucks” not for coffee but for asylum the sound effects of a broken kazoo orchestra. You were, in a word, civilized. And after this week, civilized feels like winning an Olympic medal in an event I didn’t know I was competing in.
A Moment of Reflection
The saying goes that we don’t know what we have until we miss it. Nobody tells us this applies to intestinal fortitude. Nobody warns us that one day we could be a functioning adult with opinions about interest rates and podcast recommendations and the next day we’ll be on our bathroom floor at 3 a.m., foreheads against cool tile, moaning “why me” to a chicken tender fraught with betrayal.
But here’s the thing about the body: It forgives. It regroups. It rebuilds its infrastructure like a scrappy little municipal government after a hurricane, and one day — quietly, without fanfare, without a marching band — it hands one a normal, boring, utterly unremarkable bowel movement, and many nearly weep with gratitude.
I did not know joy until I knew its absence. I did not know peace until I spent several days convinced my own digestive tract was trying to unionize against me. {This is not funny, yet, it is comedic, nevertheless.
A Word of Warning to the Stricken: To the man or woman currently eyeing a bucket of fried chicken at a 42nd Street fast-food: I am not your mother. I am not the health department. I am simply a witness, testifying from the other side, here to say — that chicken has a body count, and I nearly added to it. Chew carefully. Eat elsewhere. Trust the lukewarm heat lamp with your life, and it will collect on that debt.
Conclusion
To my body: Thank you, thank you, thank you, for coming back online. To my toilet: We’ve been through a war together, and I will never take you for granted again. To that fried chicken: Damn you. I will remember you forever like the way we remember a bad ex — with a full-body wince and a vow to do better.
And to any other survivors currently white-knuckling their own recoveries, tentatively trusting their guts again one cautious meal at a time: Hang in there. Somewhere on the other side of this is a bowel movement so mundane, so forgettable, so blissfully uneventful, that you’ll want to write an ode to it. Godspeed. And for the love of all that is holy, maybe order a salad next time.
August 20, 2026
For Those of Us Recovering from Severe Food Poisoning: A Survivor’s Story – Mine – Includes My Ode to a Bowel Movement
Several days ago, I made a choice. Didn’t seem like a bad choice at the time. I strolled into a fast-food joint on 42nd Street, The Big Apple, for a fried chicken meal with potatoes, coleslaw and biscuits. What subsuquently happened was not so much a meal as a hostage negotiation between my digestive system and fried poultry that had could have been marinating since the January 6, 2021 invasion-attack-attempted-coup-on-Congress.
I’ll spare you the play-by-play. I won’t spare you the metaphor. My body became Grand Central Station, if Grand Central Station only ran express trains, and all of them were going one direction, and none of them allowed time to buy a ticket.
For 72 hours, my Jersey City bathroom became the site of a pilgrimage. I visited it the way medieval peasants visited cathedrals — frequently, urgently, passionately and with the distinct sense that an Higher Power was punishing me for my sins, a combo fried chicken meal plus a free coke. So I hope you will forgive me — you, my fellow travelers, my brothers and sisters in gastrointestinal arms — if today, this ordinary day, I find myself standing in quiet reverence before the toilet bowl, gazing upon something I never thought I’d miss: A bowel movement that behaved.
Ode
Oh bowel movement, formed and whole, you eventually arrived with dignity and control. No sirens. No sprinting. No frantic little dance where I calculate bathroom distance like it’s underpants-based advanced physics. You simply… showed up. Once. And left. Like a polite dinner guest, not a home invasion.
Oh bowel movement you had structure. You held a shape, the way a proud building holds its architecture, the way a soufflé holds air, the way my dignity did not hold, three days ago, on that Q train platform, when I genuinely considered whether the subway bathroom situation had become a medical emergency.
Oh bowel movement you were not accompanied by: a cold sweat, a prayer, the specific panic of Google Maps-ing “nearest Starbucks” not for coffee but for asylum the sound effects of a broken kazoo orchestra. You were, in a word, civilized. And after this week, civilized feels like winning an Olympic medal in an event I didn’t know I was competing in.
A Moment of Reflection
The saying goes that we don’t know what we have until we miss it. Nobody tells us this applies to intestinal fortitude. Nobody warns us that one day we could be a functioning adult with opinions about interest rates and podcast recommendations and the next day we’ll be on our bathroom floor at 3 a.m., foreheads against cool tile, moaning “why me” to a chicken tender fraught with betrayal.
But here’s the thing about the body: It forgives. It regroups. It rebuilds its infrastructure like a scrappy little municipal government after a hurricane, and one day — quietly, without fanfare, without a marching band — it hands one a normal, boring, utterly unremarkable bowel movement, and many nearly weep with gratitude.
I did not know joy until I knew its absence. I did not know peace until I spent several days convinced my own digestive tract was trying to unionize against me. {This is not funny, yet, it is comedic, nevertheless.
A Word of Warning to the Stricken: To the man or woman currently eyeing a bucket of fried chicken at a 42nd Street fast-food: I am not your mother. I am not the health department. I am simply a witness, testifying from the other side, here to say — that chicken has a body count, and I nearly added to it. Chew carefully. Eat elsewhere. Trust the lukewarm heat lamp with your life, and it will collect on that debt.
Conclusion
To my body: Thank you, thank you, thank you, for coming back online. To my toilet: We’ve been through a war together, and I will never take you for granted again. To that fried chicken: Damn you. I will remember you forever like the way we remember a bad ex — with a full-body wince and a vow to do better.
And to any other survivors currently white-knuckling their own recoveries, tentatively trusting their guts again one cautious meal at a time: Hang in there. Somewhere on the other side of this is a bowel movement so mundane, so forgettable, so blissfully uneventful, that you’ll want to write an ode to it. Godspeed. And for the love of all that is holy, maybe order a salad next time.
Categories
News, Commentary Opinion Fit to Print