This is one of my most vivid memories from school.

It was just a regular day. For some reason I think it was a Thursday. Don’t know why I think that though.

Transition year, so we were all around 15 or 16 I suppose.

We were lined up outside the classroom where we have our morning registration. Waiting for the teacher to arrive. All of us in our uniforms, chatting away with newly-broken voices and freshly-dropped testicles. Still at the age where erections happen at any given moment for no reason whatsoever.

The amount of times I used to have to spend the last few minutes of a class just focussing on calming an erection is ridiculous.

Our tutor arrives.

She’s a nice woman, but not the coolest of the tutors. A bit too old to be one of the cool teachers that you chat to. She’s left the school now anyway.

She was clutching a cup of coffee in one hand and holding her keys in the other. She said hello as she walked past us towards the door.

Nobody replied.

She let us in and we began finding our seats. We had to sit in the same seats every day. I was behind a girl I always fancied, and beside a girl who was always out sick. One of the ones who seems to be out sick more than she’s in.

I walked towards my seat.

And then I saw it.

The shit.

A big turd just sat in the corner of the classroom.

Just a massive, brown, shining poo.

The most striking thing about the poo was that it was so unquestionably the creation of a human being.

Sometimes poo is ambiguous – you wouldn’t know for certain if it was a dog shit or a human shit. Sometimes.

This was one of the most undeniably human shits I’ve ever seen.

Just sitting there.

At 9am in a school classroom.

I think I was the first to see it, because of where I sat.

I didn’t really know what to do, so I just called one of the more boisterous lads and pointed at it.

He cracked up laughing. Then I cracked up laughing.

Look, there’s a shit at the back of the room!

A shit!

Look!

A big shit!

Oh jesus the smell of it, it’s rotten!

Word spread throughout the classroom.

The excitement of stuff like this is incredible. You know at that moment you’re in the midst of an incident that will be talked about non-stop for the next few days. You’re thinking about telling all your mates. All the other classes.

And for the next half hour or so, the big news is going to stay within this group of people. No twitter in them days – spreading the news like wildfire.

Soon everyone in the class had seen the shit. Some had to crane their necks. Others had to stand up but try not to be seen doing so.

The room suddenly had an incredible giddy atmosphere.

There was a shit in the room!

People were giggling and whispering, and it soon became clear that the only person in the room who was still unaware of our intrusive guest, was the teacher.

She sensed something was awry.

Right, what’s going on? Why is everyone laughing?

Silence.

Come on, what’s the joke?

One lad started to explain but broke down laughing.

Eventually someone shouted “THERE’S A PRESENT AT THE BACK OF THE ROOM, MISS”

She went to look. I’ll never forget the change in her facial expression as she laid eyes on the shit. It was a look of disappointed disgust.

This wasn’t in the job description.

She wanted to mould the minds of future greats. She wanted people to thank her for helping their lives and making them the people they are today. She wanted to educate. She wanted to help. She wanted to share.

And here she was, deciding on how to handle a classroom of thirty teenagers and a big turd. How did it come to this?

Right, everyone out.

I suppose it was the only thing she could do. We couldn’t sit in the room for much longer with a shit just sitting there beside us.

So then we were all just hanging around outside the room as the teacher went to get the caretaker.

He arrived, and we suddenly became less giddy. Here walked a man whose job today involved him sweeping up a human shit.

How was work today sweetheart?

Grand yeah. I mopped the floors, fixed some plumbing problems, had salad for lunch and swept up a big human turd.

He was carrying a dustpan and brush, like this.

The saddest part of it all is the conversation I imagine between the teacher and caretaker.

Her: John, there’s been an incident. There’s some shit in the classroom I need you to clean.

Him: How solid is it? Should I bring the mop?

Her: Pretty solid looking. The brush should do the job.

I imagined him grimacing as he went to the store cupboard and decided which brush he liked the least, and so was willing to get shit on.

We never found out fully who did it. The Phantom Shitter.

The classroom had been locked, presumably since classes finished the day before, at 4pm.

There was an LCA (Leaving Cert Applied) class that apparently had keys to the room, so they were the main suspects.

But how do you conduct that investigation? How can you even begin accusing someone of doing a shit in a class room? It’s such an offensive accusation.

The part I wonder about the most is the sequence of events. I’ve concluded that there was more than one person involved. There’s no way someone just decided to do this on their own. So how did they go about it?

Did they shit at home, in a bag or something, then bring it in really early that morning? But how do you carry a shit around?

Or perhaps they went in and just squatted there and then.

Ever since, there seemed to be a brown stain on the floor where the shit had once been. It was surely just one of those stains that lino tends to get after a while, but you never know, it may have been from the poo.

Who knows.

Who knows who was responsible?

Who knows the reason behind it?

Who knows when we’ll see the likes of it again?

All I know is that I’ll never forget it.

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17 October 2010 ‧ Education, For The Lolz ‧ 4 Comments