Poop Lady

"Poop" Lady was the second chapter in an anthology of Ted Phillips' childhood experiences that he began writing in 1997 on loose leaf paper. While historians have speculated what some of the other chapters contained, "Poop" Lady is the only portion of the anthology that still exists today.

<div style="text-indent: 2em">Nick went off to play with Clare and I walked back into my bedroom to get my book. I was reading The Lost World: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. It was a good book. A third of it unlike the movie directed by Steven Spielberg. So was the first book, Jurassic Park, but not as much as this one.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I read a lot so far: 48 pages.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I reached under my pillow and pulled out the 430 page book. I walked into my mom's room which was also the living room. Collapsing on the couch, I opened the book and got underneath the covers. For an hour and a half I read; from page 48 to 108: a total of 60 pages.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">It was on page 108 that I discovered a "Poop" Lady was in our house.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Aahhh!" I heard from the bathroom, as something crashed to the floor.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"What the--" I said in a quiet voice.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Then the bathroom door swung open. And Clare came running out, Nick close behind. Clare was nude; Nick had been changing her diaper. When she escaped in the middle of her changing.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Clare was 9, no 6 inches from the couch, when Nick cried, "No! Don't go on the couch!", grasping her arm just in time. I jumped up and fell against the wall. When I saw poop on her hand.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Nick had run away and I was trapped on the couch by a wailing -- poop-lady. She wouldn't stop wailing; it made me nauseous just looking at her mouth: poop smeared across the inner part of her top lip.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Suddenly, something happened: Clare stopped crying. She took her hand and wiped her mouth, leaving a trail of poop across her face. This was the perfect time to say something. So I said the only possible thing I could think to say at that moment: "Go wipe your butt."</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">She started wailing again, just standing there. It was about two minutes later, almost crying myself, I said it again: "Go wipe your butt."</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Clare continued to wail and in about 5 seconds she turned away and went into the bathroom.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Three minutes later, she returned from the bathroom and almost immediately I said, "Turn Around." She still stood there, motionless. I waited, then repeated myself: "Turn around."</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">It took a hour for the words to reach her ears, it seemed, because I had to wait a minute before she turned around. She turned at light speed, hardly enough time for me to notice if she had wiped herself properly or not.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I asked her to turn around again, but she refused. So with the split-second I saw, I had to decide whether or not she should wipe herself again.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I decided and said, "Wipe yourself again." She stood there, staring. Come on, I want to play video games, I wanted to say. I walked over to a crate and stood on it. Clare followed. I went back on the bed and so did Clare. I kept going; on to the far end of the bed. Clare stayed tracking me. A live relentless missile, she was. And if she got me I'd have an explosion of poop and the debris would be all over me.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I walked onto the crate again and this time Clare didn't stop coming. She climbed on the crate, too. But I jumped back onto the bed, before she could get me. No, don't come on the bed, I thought. It'll be contaminated with poop forever.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">She reached for the bed. Then, just as her poop-covered fingers grabbed the edge, a miracle occurred: Clare got off the crate and went into the bathroom.</div>
<div style="text-indent: 2em">I plugged the Donkey Kong Country 3 cartridge into the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). I pushed POWER and the title screen came up.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">When I reached SELECT GAME something weird happened; something that had never happened before: Game numbers 1, 2, & 3 had disappeared. Erased, the games had been erased. But by whom? Not Clare: she hardly knows how to play. Maybe Nick --</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I asked Nick, "Nick, why did you erase everyone's game?"</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"I didn't!" Nick answered annoyed.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Very odd. The only next possibility was: the computer did it. But this game wasn't programmed with Automatic Erasure of Progress. And besides --</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I continued and played for a half an hour until Clare came in and sat on the clear plastic storage box, containing the video games.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Clare stood up and ran back into the kitchen. Pressing pause, I looked over at the contaminated storage box. The small was awful; it was odious: I felt like I'd die.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Nick!" I cried, trying not to inhale the odor. I waited impatiently. "Nick!"</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">Nick came running into the room. "What?"</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Get that outta here!"</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">He picked it up and placed it on top of the dogfood pail. The dogfood pail was a large blue pail with "Friskies: COME'N GET IT" worded on the side in a box. This pail contained dogfood, of course.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I quickly saved my progress and turned the power off. I walked into the kitchen and the first thing I saw was the contaminated storage box sitting on the dogfood pail. Further in the kitchen I saw Clare sitting on my mom's favorite seat. I walked into the bathroom and peed.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I came out and Mom opened the front door.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Mom! You're back!" I cried, entering the living room. "I've been waiting an hour and a half for you."</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"I'm hungry," Nick interrupted.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"I've been gone for three hours and you never made yourself breakfast?" Mom asked.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Yeah," Nick said.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">I hesitated, then said, "Yup."</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Then what've you been doing all this time?"</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Running from Clare. She's been putting poop everywhere," I said.</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Why doesn't she have her diaper on?"</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Because," said Nick. "I was --"</div><div style="text-indent: 2em">"Yeah," I interrupted. "Nick was changing Clare's diaper and she got away."</div>

• When applying to film school, Ted Phillips described "Poop Lady" in his portfolio:
  

  Ted Phillips said:

  While playing Super Nintendo, I am terrorized by a toddler sister who has lathered herself in her own feces.

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