There I sat on the makeshift toilet over the hole in the ground in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, pondering the progress I’ve made with pooping in public bathrooms.

Let me take you back a few years to elementary school, middle school, and the first part of high school when I would not go near a school bathroom. Why I had an aversion to bathrooms, I’m not really sure. I’m not an uptight person, but pooping in public grossed me out. I attended school in four inner city school buildings. They were old, our budget was small, and our bathrooms were safe, but gross. What is it with school kids and their overuse of toilet paper and inability to flush?

Neither my younger brother nor I would poop in school or any other public bathrooms. By the time my parents were done with work and we drove 30 minutes home, we would race inside to one of two bathrooms and stake our claim for the next half hour. Maybe it was being home, maybe it was the leisurely pace, but I was a private pooper for many years.

I’m not sure where that came from. My dad would never talk about private business, but for my mom and her side of the family? Bodily functions are just normal dinner time convo. It was pretty standard at my daycare as well, where 12 other kids would gather around the toilet and sing “bye bye poopy, bye bye poopy, bye bye poopy, I hate to see you go,” to the tune of “Goodnight Ladies.”

Keep in mind I would go away to a summer fine arts camp for 12 days and hold in the #2 for as long as humanly possible (my record is a week).

By my junior year of high school, I was spending so much time at school, it was inevitable. I would have to learn to get over my phobia of public restroom pooping. But I definitely waited until there was no one in the bathroom. One of my fellow choir members from the soprano section and I had it down to an art. There was a teacher’s lounge with a private bathroom near our music classroom. One would stand guard while the other would do her business.

It was amazing that I made that much progress because I had a traumatizing experience at my best friends house. It was 7 am on a Sunday morning. I’m neither a morning person nor a morning pooper. But I found myself in the bathroom needing to go! The deed was done before I realized there was no toilet paper on the roll or anywhere else in the bathroom. The entire family was asleep. For 20 minutes, I texted and called my friend, but she never woke up. I even texted my mom, like she could do anything. I eventually searched every closet and cupboard in their upstairs hallway with my pants around my ankles and finally found a roll.

Surprisingly unscathed from my sleepover experience, I applied for a counselor position at a summer camp with famously disgusting bathrooms and equally gut-busting food. That was my reckoning. Poop or explode. At that point, the days of my leisurely bathroom breaks were gone. I was grown up, I had responsibilities. It was in, out, and on my way.

So, I return to my wilderness experience at Pictured Rocks this fall. At that point, the makeshift toilet at the top of the hill was better than the day prior -- which was a hole, a squat, and a few measly squares of biodegradable toilet paper.

In conclusion, the #1 thing I’ve learned about #2 comes from a pun, “it’s not just a job, it’s my doody.”