Ever shit yourself?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I mean literally.

And I don’t mean due to a gastric disturbance; I mean due to an extremely threatening set of circumstances.

This question came to me last night. I was enjoying a couple of quiet pints in my local pub, when a few undesirables came in. I was soon aware of raised voices and a scuffle breaking out, then I heard someone shouting “Oh, right, so you’ve got a blade and that makes you a big man”, then a stool was thrown, a couple of glasses were thrown and I immediately retreated somewhere as safe as possible but I could clearly see a guy standing in the doorway waving a knife around.

He (unsurprisingly) did a runner out of the pub, and the guy he’d been fighting with sprinted into the toilets. And then we all smelled it. At some point (presumably when the other guy pulled the knife on him), he’d shit himself. Literally. He was still hiding in the toilets when the police arrived, who escorted him off the premises. Oh boy, did he stink.

So, it got me thinking. We all use the phrase “So, I shit myself” or “I was absolutely crapping myself”, but the phrase is normally used figuratively.

Does this routinely happen in truly life-threatening situations? What causes this to happen? Is it a defence mechanism? And have you ever experienced it?

Not the pleasantest of questions, but I know I’ll get answers here from the good folks of the Dope.

Wasn’t sure if this was a IMHO or a MPSIMS, but I suppose I am asking actually for experience of the phenomenon, so here it goes.

2

Not out of fear, but i’ve severely miscalculated the content of farts before.

3

I’ve seen a cat do this, but not a human: I brought my kitty to meet my friend’s cat, and his cat saw mine, and a trail of poo came out of its ass onto the carpet. What a pussy!

Then of course you have this bungee jumper (not NSFW but pretty gross…).

4

Grossman reports this to be very common in threatening situation such as combat, as he describes in On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace. Although it is one of those things that is not spoken of in polite company, it is well-known to soldiers in combat that this occurs. There are several hypotheses why this is an instinctual reaction, including the desire to purge the bowels so as to allow for unrestricted contraction of the core muscles used in climbing, kicking, and grappling, use of fecal matter as a distraction or insult weapon (as seen in chimpanzees), and soiling oneself as a means of preventing an unarmed attack from the rear while retreating. None of these apply to modern armed combat, of course, but explain this behavior in evolutionary terms. Similar behavior can be seen in other primates and non-primate large omnivores like bears and canines.

Stranger

5

My cat has shit herself in terror, notably at the vet’s office. I never have, yet.

The mere presence of the Vet reduces my cat to a pitiable state of fear - she shivers, her hair seems to spontaneously shed, and she shits herself.

6

“Precious Memories, How They Linger”:smiley:

Didn’t actually shit myself but came close a few years ago.

Coming back from Border’s Books one day where I had one of those iced coffee’s. (I do not drink coffee as a rule).

So within about 3 miles from home, that iced coffee musta combined with the chocolate eclair I’d also had and they decided to make a break for it.

OMG! Never have I done my Kegels so fast and hard as I did that day, while my stomach was merrily “singing along” You know, those little pops, wheezes and groans?

Up ahead! On the right, a covenience store! YES! I think I can make it! So I put the pedal to the metal, as it were, and the next thing I see… blue lights just a-flashin behind me!

I don’t stop. We were within 500 yards or so from the store and when I pulled in, he pulled in right beside me. I jumped out of the car, he, of course, went for his Glock, so I screamed, “I gotta SHIIIIIT”.

He relaxes says, 'Well GO then, Bubba!" (I don’t like being called Bubba).

So I run in the door, the girl behind the counter turns white as a sheet, thinking she was about to be robbed!

“Bathroom, where’s the bathroom!!!”, I screamed at her.

“Straight back the way you’re headed!”, she screamed back.

I make it back there, try to open the door, Oh God, someone’s in there!!!

Just as I was about to pull down my jeans and squat, the door opened, I shoved the guy out of the way, and I made it with maybe one nano-second to spare.

Through the door, I heard the guy say one word, “Dood!”

Okay, crisis number one averted, crisis two (the cop) yet to come.

So I finish, wipe my sorry ass (using about half the roll), and start to flush it down, wondering if I’m gonna stop that thing up, but then I hesitate and don’t do it.

Instead, I leave the restroom and down at the counter were the cop and the girl.

They took one look one look at me and went into one of those “sputtering” laughs! You know the one I mean, right? Saliva comes out and sprays the person standing close to you?

So, smiling sheepishly, I waited for them to recover, and said, “Sir, I saved you the evidence”, whereupon they both went into paroxysisms of laughter again.

Finally, the cop wipes his eyes and says, “Bubba, go ahead and flush it down. I’ll take your word for it! No ticket either, but in the future, don’t EVER jump out of your car that way. I mighta shot you, and if I hadda, wouldn’t we have had a mess?”

He let me go, but I bet him and his buddies, maybe his wife and kids, had themselves a laugh that night.

Time Travel - Back, Way Back. Back to the 60’s and my senior year in high school.

I was in the front parlor, suckin’ face with my girlfriend, when she said to me, "Bill, mother and I were talking the other day, and she asked me, “Lynn, how come Bill never goes to the bathroom when he’s here?”

I imagine Lynn said something like “Mom! what a question!”

Mom was kinda strange.

So one night, I really did have to go, so I excused myself, and went to do… #2!!!

Finished, flushed the toilet, but unbeknownst to me, the toilet overflowed sometimes, and here came one turd followed by his buddy, floating right to the surface.

Well, the water overflowed, hit the tile floor, and Mom pounds on the door, saying loudly, “Bill, let me in! I know how to fix it!”

Yeah right. I’m sure gonna do that!

For all I knew, she was a copraphagist, and wanted those things for herself.

So what did I do? I took the roll of toilet paper, wrapped a lot of it around my hands, and gingerly pulled those bad boys out, turned around, opened the bathroom window and let’em fly into some thick bushes behind the house.

Let her in, went and kissed Lynn and went home, wondering if Mom might go looking for my two exquisitely formed friends.

Like shit floating out of a toilet, so were those days of my life

One more. It’s short, don’t worry.

Age 18, and time to take the SAT for college.

The room was very still, as we all worked very intensely trying to get the best score. Mine was 950.

Suddenly, my belly does one of those “go off inside farts” They sound kinda like this: eeeep.

Somebody in the back snorted, and pretty soon the whole room went nuts.

These are true stories.

And they’re in my memoirs.

They are written the way they are, because I LIKE to write in narrative style, because I fancy myself a writer, I guess. Never published, though. Trunk full of unfinished stuff.

Thanks,

Quasi

7

I have not.
I’ve puked in the fountain at the mall. I’ve blown my nose on the ground at the park.
But no, I’ve never shit myself that I can remember.

8

Heh the second one sounds like a story my brother (I shit you not, so to speak :D) told me about a date he was on.

It was a formal prom date, and he was dressed to impress when he visited her house. Suddenly, he was overtaken with the urge, and excused himself off to the washroom - where he shit a rock solid turd that simply refused to be flushed.

What to do? He didn’t want to leave that floater for all to see; nor did he wish to break it into flushable bits with his hands.

He decided on concealment. He took a wad of TP and gingerly picked it up, lifted the top of the toilet tank - and dropped it in.

In light of that, I guess it was fortunate that the date wasn’t successful. :smiley:

9

Thats what happens when you don’t know your english/metric conversions like you should :slight_smile:

I knew a rock climber. He fell a few feet once. He knew he was falling, and knew it would only be a few feet that he would fall.

He said he still managed to explode a load uncontrollably in that very short time before he hit the ground.

Myself ? I’ve probably made diamonds before, but thats just my personal reaction style…

10

You sure you cats not just in grad school ?

11

My (small) dog did. We were out walking, and she was happily smelling the grass between the road and a house with a high, dense hedge. Suddenly, from right behind the hedge, exploded the sound of ferocious, furious barking, from a very large, very aggressive-sounding dog. If my dog was thinking about pooing soon, well, it happened immediately.

It was actually kind of funny.

I have had accidents, but they’ve been due to intestinal distress, not fear.

12

This phrase is unnecessarily confusing, in this context. Totally jumbled up the narrative for me.

13

Never happened to me personally but it does remind me of this:

A guy walks into a bar and proceeds to get so drunk that he winds up throwing up all over himself.

“Goddammit,” he says to the bartender, “Look what I did. And my wife is going to kill me since she just bought me this shirt.”

The bartender says, “That’s no problem. When you get home, tell your wife that the guy next to you threw up on you then flash her a ten dollar bill and say that he offered to pay for the dry cleaning.”

The guy tells the bartender that that’s a great idea, thanks him and heads out.

When he gets home, his wife asks, “What happened to you?”

The guy says, “Well this fellow at the bar got so drunk that he actually threw up on me but he gave me this ten dollars to pay for the dry cleaning.”

The wife says, “Then why are you holding a twenty dollar bill?”

The guys says, “Oh yeah, he also shit in my pants.”

14

Never thought of the double meaning - it’s quite a mental picture!

Thanks for the interesting info, and although I specifically was only looking for tales of fear-inspired pant soiling, thanks for the funny stories too.

Seems it is pretty rare - unless you’re a domestic pet…

15

Perhaps it’s just to jettison excess weight if you choose to go for the ‘flight’ option; and with a little bit of luck, any potential pursuer might slip, as well! Kind of like when KITT produces an oil slick…

16

Edit - I didn’t read the OP before posting this.

17

If a question exists, eventually someone will ask it on the Dope.