One of the best things about being involved in a student group is all the opportunities it affords me: among the opportunities afforded to me this past spring was a trip to Washington, DC with the UNCG Classical Society, for not all that much money, because, as an educational excursion, the university partially funded it. As part of this trip, we were given a special tour of the US Capitol Building by one of our state senator’s aides (this is literally the only thing I could ever imagine myself thanking Richard Burr for). While on this tour, we passed by something people pass by every day without note: a restroom. This restroom in question was, as befits the US Capitol, pretty cool. It had big stars on the outside, one for each stall, and we were told that each star lit up when the stall was occupied. Pretty useful. Then our tour guide told us something else in the form of a humorous anecdote (he had heard it from a Democratic senator, he assured us): when Hillary Clinton was in the Senate, it is said that she would enter the restroom and all seven stars would light up.

I think some of our group laughed, but I can’t imagine it was out of anything other than a sense of vague discomfort: Was it a joke? Was there a punchline I had missed here? I could not for the life of me figure out what that anecdote was supposed to mean. I spent months pondering it, staying up late into the night considering the possibilities. Could Secretary Clinton honest-to-God be seven lizards in a skin suit? Or perhaps she had six gnomes stored away in her pockets and they took synchronized bathroom breaks? Try as I might, I could not piece together what this cryptic yarn was supposed to mean. That is, until a fateful day the other month when a story broke about the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee: she has hot sauce in her bag (swag).

Now, as you may or may not know, regular consumption of spicy foods can create very unpleasant odors (thank me that that link does not go to the gross source I could have sent you to). Additionally, Hillary Clinton reportedly eats chilies and hot sauce regularly for the health benefits and has done so since at least 1992—she apparently even eats jalapeños “like potato chips." I think it’s really weird, but the woman is no Ted Cruz. When I combined these two things in my mind, suddenly it all clicked, the reason why Hillary would take up all seven stalls in the women’s restroom, and possibly even why she took so long getting back from her bathroom break during the first Democratic Primary Debate: it was an act of mercy.

Imagine that you are someone who eats as much spicy food as Hillary Clinton. Imagine that you, too, are therefore subject to the (for lack of a better term) fiery, stinky poos that must go with this hot sauce obsession. Would you not do everything in your power to make sure that you had the bathroom to yourself every time, lest you asphyxiate a colleague with noxious fumes? I’m not saying that every time Secretary Clinton went to the bathroom as a senator from New York that she entered every stall, locked the door, crawled under the divider to the next one, repeated until all the stalls were occupied and then crawled under the dividers again, unlocking them all one by one, but that’s mostly because I don’t actually know if locking the doors on the stalls is what made the stars light up, since I have never been in the women’s restroom at the US Capitol myself. Regardless, I can, at last, rest more easily at night knowing the likely cause—the straight poop, if you will—about this curious anecdote.