I will stop the story at this point to tell you about IMPs. I have a background with Army Cadets as well as a lot of friends currently serving in the armed forces, so I am no stranger to Canadian IMPs. Just like American MREs, Canadian military food is ideal for camping and hiking -- it is pre-packaged and ready to eat, requiring no cooking nor even any water. Just open and eat. They are packed with calories -- one Canadian IMP contains enough energy to sustain you for one whole day. I had packed enough to eat two a day -- one for breakfast and one for dinner.
Anyone who has been in the military or read this site knows that IMPs and MREs pretty much stop your digestive system right in its tracks.
There at the base camp, the IMP did not go down easily. It caused a lot of cramps, gas, and general discomfort in my stomach. But because I was so worn out from the hike, I promptly fell asleep.
I woke up to the hot morning sun cooking me inside my tent -- not the feeling I needed to wake up to.
The hike that day was kept simple for my benefit -- we explored close to camp and came back for the evening. No mountain climbing today. Over the course of the day I regained my old composure, my appetite, and my strength by eating properly, although it was a fight to do so.
It was not until the third day that things started feeling heavy. Though IMPs were designed to make a person hold out under normal conditions, I really doubt they were tested for my circumstances. On that third day we made a long hike and discovered a really great glacial stream. It was getting close to thirty degrees Celsius outside (86º F), and the ice-cold glacial stream was welcomed with open arms and open Nalgine bottles. That is when I realized that the grogan beast growing in my stomach wanted to be birthed.
I let the group know, grabbed my toilet paper, and went off a ways from the stream so that I could do my thing. What I gave birth to out there was probably the largest and most discolored turd I have ever dropped. It was about eight inches long and equivalent in girth to a soda can. The thing that made it special: it was half-and-half colored. The first half was black, pitch black -- then it abruptly changed to a normal brown.
I am never really one to stare at my own work. I usually have a look and flush it away. But because this was in the bush, out in the open, and not going anywhere, I stared at it for a time, wondering if maybe I had some internal damage from being so sick.
I alerted my friends to my new child and expressed my concern. One of the guys said that the black color was probably my body's way of flushing out all the contaminants in my system after being so sick. Everyone else agreed, and that is where I let it rest.
The rest of my trip went normally. After that poop I felt infinitely better, even better than I did before I got sick. The IMPs did their work and kept me going through the rest of the trip. For me, the poop story ends there.
But this saga does not. You see, my perfectly healthy friend Pete was on the exact same diet I was. And the IMPs were doing to him exactly what they were supposed to do.
We returned back from the hiking trip and the day of rest passed. The next day, I asked Pete up if he gotten rid of his IMPs yet. Nope.
One week later he had still not gone.
We were on a trip to Vancouver, stopped for food in a city called Kamloops, when it hit. We had just gotten our meals and had started to eat when Pete abruptly stopped, looked at me, and uttered, "It's time." He got up and left the table. The dude was gone for about twenty minutes.
I had just finished eating my meal when Pete walked back to the table, his face beet red, laughing hysterically. I asked him what was so funny. "Go have a look for yourself," he said. I knew that whatever he had done would probably require us to pay and leave the restaurant immediately. So I decided to have a look before we made our exit.
Upon opening the men's room door, I noticed water on the floor pooled around the only stall in the washroom. I peaked around the door. What I saw amazed me.
My friend Pete is not a big guy -- maybe five foot two and 130 pounds soaking wet. This guy produced something that I can only equate to a NFL football-sized (and shaped!) turd. Not only that, but it had its own unique tannish-manila color to it. And, surprisingly for something that size, it was floating in water that was up to the rim of the toilet.
I started to laugh as I made my way back to the table. We had a good chuckle at the Godzilla turd that my friend produced and planned to make our exit. But we felt bad for the poor bastard who would have to deal with it. So we wrote "Sorry" on a napkin in black felt pen, took the napkin into the stall, placed it on the lid of the toilet, hoped he'd see the humor in the situation, and made our exit. Life went back to normal.