Horribleness

Recently, I was at a music festival with the hippie band I sing in. The festival was in a big park fairground type situation, and like most festivals, the only bathrooms were sketchy portable toilets.

Well, we had finished our set and were going back to camp to play more music and hang out for the night. It was obviously dark by that time, but I had to go to the bathroom, so I wandered over to the "Honey Buckets".

It wouldn't be exaggerating to say that the "toilets" were in a very advanced state of disgustingness (to quote one of my 7th graders) since it was so long into the festival, and not surprisingly, many of the people using the facilities were already drunk, stoned or whatever. So, I peed, and I was pulling my jeans back up when I heard a small sound, like a credit card dropping to the ground. I suddenly remembered that I had slid my Chevron gas card into the back pocket of my jeans earlier in the afternoon.

I wondered, could that be my gas card that just fell out of my pocket?

I felt my pockets, all were empty. It was pitch black inside that plastic booth that incidentally, smelled nothing like honey. I felt around the grimy floor for my gas card. I couldn't see a thing, and I was starting to panic. If someone was to get a hold of that card, they could rack up untold amounts of gasoline before I could stop them, couldn't they? Driven by this thought, I continued frantically feeling around all surfaces in the porta potty. No luck.

I then realized that I probably had to do the unthinkable in order to retrieve my card.

I steeled my nerves and my senses and then reached in to the depths of the toilet. My card was right on top of everything. I was actually amazed at how I set my hand right on it. Of course I immediately ran out of there silently screaming, holding my hands away from my body at a great distance. I ran past all the little encampments, barely registering the confused stares of my fellow musicians and festival-goers.

I flew in to the makeshift kitchen at the hospitality tent and started furiously pumping the water out of the plastic sink , not caring that I wasn't supposed to be there. After washing my hands for 20 minutes and dousing my card with bleach, I felt better.

Needless to say, I learned a lesson about putting things back where they belong that night. Just thought I'd share.