Exploding Toilets

I know I’m not supposed to laugh when some poor sucker gets his behind blown up while lighting a cigarette in the porta-potty; all the same, I will need to repent some. I read in the Houston Chronicle this morning where the portable potty had been placed on top of a methane line, there was a crack in the line; or was his crack directly over the line, when the lighter ignited the collected gas. I know, there’s nothing funny about getting blown up and burned in a porta-potty; snicker, snicker…

Back when my mom worked at the hospital, she told me about some other poor soul’s misadventures on Halloween. He had been working in his garage, fixing his car. He had wiped off his hands with solvent and discarded the rag into the toilet. I’m a little fuzzy on the sequence of events; it having been a long time ago, so some of this may be reversed. He was about to sit on the toilet when the door bell rang; it being Halloween he asked his wife to get the door. When she wouldn’t respond he got up and went to the door expecting little hob goblins; instead his wife had removed all her clothing and put on a piece of Saran Wrap as a special late night Halloween surprise for him. Upon viewing a nearly naked woman, for he never realized it was his wife at first, he fell backwards and hit his head on a railing that was there at the entry way. The ambulance took him to the hospital where they treated his wounds and the two returned home a couple of hours later.

Upon returning home he decided to take a quiet moment of retreat to the thrown room where he lighted a cigar. It was then that he was reminded of the rags, the rags from earlier in this line of bad events, the ones with solvent that he had discarded earlier. The explosion threw him off the toilet and he crashed through the glass tub enclosure. The second ambulance transported him to the same hospital where he was treated for cuts and burns, by the same staff that had treated him before.

So, if I laugh a little too loud about the fellow getting blown up and burned in the porta-potty, maybe it’s because I was reminded of the other incident.