By Leonard Pigg

True story. Back when I lived in Indianapolis years ago, I was at a Denny’s one late night with my partner in crime, Derek. We used to always meet interesting people there after the bars were closed. It always seemed that late nights were made for the weird and we were always in the thick of it. It was typical to have conversations with bouncers, roadies, pimps and all walks of life. Meanwhile, there would be a myriad of people in and out of the place in various states of sobriety.

One time, we met a group of guys from Alabama that were in town for the Indianapolis 500. They sat at an adjacent table to us and we had casual conversation. Eventually, they told us about an event called “Power Shitting.” It became an underground competitive thing at their high school, which made me wonder if funding for athletic programs had been cut or something. Anyway, the object of this game was to create a mess into, onto, or around the toilet. The bigger the mess, the more points you’d get. Competition would get pretty fierce, so many of the guys would eat big breakfasts or lunches for ammunition. Some guys would even hold off going to the toilet, in order to let their waste build up for later. In some cases, there were a couple of guys that would take laxatives in advance, to guarantee a real mess. People would take bets on who would be the winner and had an opportunity to cash in on something they normally do for free.

Most of the time, a participant would go in the stall and not flush, showing off what he had done to be judged. The group would then rank his movement, giving it a score. Some of the more rowdier contestants would sometimes go in a sink, a trash can, or onto a newspaper to show off what they made. In one instance, there was a kid who decided to use the larger handicapped stall for his turn. He took off his pants and underwear, climbing atop the handicap bars in the stall. Once hovering above the toilet, he turned his bowels loose, befouling the entire stall in a brown rain of terror. He won the most points that day and had literally been crowned King Shit.

This went on for a couple of weeks until the janitor threatened to quit, as nobody wants to spend their entire day mopping up shit. Word began to spread around school about the strange competition, but nobody had been implicated. The situation escalated to the point that the principal actually announced over the intercom during the daily announcements, that anyone caught Power Shitting would be expelled. The boys decided it was time to retire the game, as nobody wanted to have to potentially explain to their parents that they were kicked out of school for taking a dump.