I Pooped My Pants Today. Luckily No One Knows.

Earlier today, I shit my pants. No, not that little wet fart. A full-on reverted to being a toddler couldn't hold it anymore thing.

Luckily no one knows.

It's not like I'd be stupid enough to share it with the tens of thousands of people who read this site and follow me, right?

Who are we kidding here, of course I'm that dumb!!!

While we're here, maybe I can turn crapping my pants into a teachable moment, because that's what us dads do, right?

Shit happens to EVERYONE.

When's the last time you had a conversation like this?

“Hi! How's it going?”

“Good, great really. Other than I shit my pants earlier, had to drive home trying not to sit in it, then spent a half-hour taking another shower and cleaning up the mess.”

It's tempting to think that you could never achieve that which others have because we don't have those conversations. When's the last time you heard something like, “I pooped my pants today” from a public figure?

My guess is not recently. Unfortunately, that can be rather discouraging because we're tempted to believe that we're the only ones that have problems because most people don't advertise their failures.

The thing is, shit happens to all of us. Maybe you haven't pooped your pants literally or figuratively since you were a baby, but just wait. It'll happen again at some point. We all have accidents, make mistakes, and go through some crap. That's part of being human.

Sometimes bad things happen that are no fault of our own.

For the record, this isn't a normal day for me. I don't have any medical issues and I wasn't drunk or on anything. I probably just ate something that didn't sit well, and there wasn't a bathroom nearby. Sometimes things just happen that are no fault of our own.

Sometimes things are our fault, in which case the best thing to do is to try and learn from our mistakes, figure out how we'll avoid them in the future, and move on. In this case, maybe I could have avoided it by not going out when my tummy started feeling a little off, but I can't think of the last time something like this happened, so I'm not sure what I'd have done differently. Sometimes things are unavoidable.

We don't like to talk about our failures, but all of us have them.

If you read any biography that isn't just a pat myself on the back one, you'll find that every influential figure in history has gone through good and bad times. Love, heartbreak, loss, feeling depressed, feeling happy, going through hard times, going through good times, all of those things are simply parts of our shared existence.

We start feeling bad about ourselves when our spouses or we don't do stuff that winds up on r/HappyMarriages regularly, or our careers or businesses don't take off right away. We look in the mirror and see those extra pounds, and it's tempting to compare ourselves to the touched up photos of celebrities.

Or our bodies decide to go crazy some day and we crap our pants.

It's all part of the human existence; no one is immune. Not you, not I, not the president. We all have not so social media worthy moments.

Ask yourself this question next time you're having a bad day.

Next time you get tempted to compare your private failures to the successes that everyone else is posting on social media, ask yourself this question.

“Did I shit my pants today?”

If not, you're doing well. If so, wipe that shit off, take a shower, and enjoy the rest of your day.