Last Saturday I went to the Utah Arts Festival in downtown Salt Lake. I love this event, mainly for the free music, which is almost always independent and alternative in nature. I also love all that gorgeous art too, but lord knows I can’t afford any of it right now. Even though I’m dying to totally trick out my house with it. But on the plus side for my neighbors maybe it’s better that I can’t. Or else I’d be one of those crazy ladies with a front yard full of eclectic cast iron sculptures of naked people doing weird things around a birdbath made out of the wheel well of an F-16 (yes, there is such a thing, and it’s pretty dang cool).

But the main issue about going to these renaissance-faire-type shindigs is that they last all day outside in the hot sun. So you drink a lot, spiked or otherwise, and at some point you have to go to the bathroom. That’s where it gets dicey, because these events always roll out the porta potties.

Porta Potties Have Bad Mojo For Me

Most people (and by that, I mean women) don’t like porta potties. Not only do they smell like a fermenting, frontline, fox hole latrine, I’m here to tell you peeing over an open sewage pit is not any woman’s idea of relief, no matter how Rambo she might be. Honestly, I’d rather take my chances at a gay bar restroom, as I have no qualms about shooing out all the trannies when I want some privacy to do my business.

But for me, the REAL reason I don’t like using porta potties is because every time I have a close encounter with one I somehow manage to drop something important down into that stinky abyss. And to make matters worse I usually go through a spastic juggling process first, in which fate deludes me into thinking I just might be able to save my flying valuables from a crappy death—IF I use my super Ninja reflexes to catch them. Problem is I’m about as Ninja as a banana slug. Inevitably I end up doing a demented Hokey Pokey around the makeshift toilet seat, only to watch my car keys do a near-perfect 9.8 swan dive into a disgusting pool of second-hand bean burritos and funnel cakes.

My Stuff Eaten By Porta Potties

In the past, at various fairs and sporting events, porta potties have consumed my wallet, my credit cards, my drivers license, the entire contents of my purse, an Armani jacket (don’t ask me what the hell I was doing wearing Armani to the Del Mar Fair), expensive artwork that I’d just purchased, assorted hats, scarves, and jewelry (including my wedding ring, which should’ve been a clue right there that my marriage was in trouble), and my pants.

Yes, you heard that right.

One time some silly-ass yahoo spilled root beer all over my leggings so I went into the porta potty to wring then out. But as soon as they were off my body the porta potty sucked them down into that black hole like an evil magnetic vortex. In reality, I tripped and dropped the leggings when I used my hands to catch my fall. Down the leggings went to be one with all that gunk, leaving me to wonder how the hell I was going to walk around the Swiss Days Festival in Midway, Utah, without wearing any pants. I didn’t even have on cute underwear that day.

Fortunately, I was wearing a long shirt that barely passed itself off as a scary-ho, shorter-than-short, mini dress. When I sheepishly emerged from the bank of porta potties I looked like some trucker’s middle-aged wife trying to relive her youth by dressing like a skanky seventh grader. Hey, at least it beats getting arrested for indecent exposure in Wasatch County, which I believe is punishable by death in that jurisdiction.

Those Greedy Porta Potties at the Utah Arts Festival

So last Saturday, after consuming lots of sodium-infested fair foods at the Utah Arts Festival, I pounded down several bottled waters and as a result had to pee. In my possession at the time were my purse, a cute sun hat, and a zoot suit, which is my son’s band costume, being that he’s in a 24-piece 1940s big band. None of which I could risk dumping down the crapper. So I asked a friend to hold all my stuff, loading her up like a pack mule while I carefully scrutinized the outside of each potty in an attempt to determine which one was the least offensive. (A moot point, really, that I liken to trying to select the cleanest knife with which to commit suicide.)

Once inside my carefully-selected porta potty, I noticed that these new and improved porta potties now have primitive commodes, so you’re not actually staring down into the horror show of sludge. Nice, I thought. Where was this innovative technology when I so stupidly dressed in expensive designer duds just to eat hot dogs on a stick and deep-fried Twinkies back in the day?

I pulled down my pants, but before I could fire up my brain synapses to eek out another thought, the entire contents of my pockets, which included a bunch of change, the key to my storage shed, and my debit card, dove into the potty and swirled around the bowl like kids banking a turn on the log ride at Knott’s Berry Farm.

And then they were gone.

“What the…?! Motherf*$king, stupid-ass, dimwitted dumbshit, %*$&#&*%*%&$…etc.”

This went on for at least a minute at full volume. I sincerely hope there weren’t any children in any of the porta potties around me.

I’ve since decided that colostomy bags should be the new thing for all-day outdoor events, at least the ones that insist porta potties are the way to go. I know that’s a far cry from the days when I’d get all dolled up just to impress the scary carnies on the midway, but now days I’m all about comfort—my comfort, that is. So it appears I’ve progressed from Armani to Pee Pants as the new resort wear for fairs and whatnot.

In the mean time, those damn porta potties will forever remain on my shit list.

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Stacy Dymalski is the host of the hilarious TV talk show “Mother Bloggers” on FirstRun.tv. She’s also an award winning keynote speaker and stand-up comic who gave up the glamorous life of coach travel, smokey comedy clubs, and heckling drunks for the glamourous life of raising kids (who happen to be bigger hecklers than the drunks). This blog is her new stage.

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