The Incident

Nearly two years ago, I graduated from BYU-Idaho.

I wrote about my graduation here, but there are a few things I didn't tell you.

So let's go back in time a little and revisit one of the most memorable days of my life.

When my family traveled to Idaho for my graduation, we stayed in Idaho Falls, which is about 40 minutes away from campus. We had plans to stop at campus to get my name card and other graduation necessities and then eat at Big Jud's, meet my parents at Bear World, and go back to campus for the ceremonies. I decided to go ahead and wear my dress for the whole day because we weren't going back to our hotel at all.

That morning, on campus, we snapped a few photos to beat the graduation crowds.

Please note that this was my favorite dress, and those were my favorite sandals. 

As I mentioned, we stopped at Big Jud's for lunch. We were supposed to then go to Bear World to meet my parents. As we were leaving Big Jud's, I was admiring the local farmland through the van window as my meal was working its way through my system. I felt a little air develop in my bowels, and I attempted to release it. 

Without going into too much detail, let's just say... it wasn't air. 

I screamed, and Scotty slammed on the breaks because, clearly, we were about to die. He yelled, "What? WHAT??? What's wrong???" 

I just froze and stared straight forward. 

Scotty kept prompting me to tell him what the heck was going on. Finally, I looked over at him and said, "I just sharted."

After Scotty had his I-thought-someone-was-dying! Don't-ever-scream-like-that-again! freak out, he asked, "What do we need to do?" We were in the middle of nowhere - no gas stations, no businesses. Just potato field after potato field. There was no way I was going to go into a public bathroom anyway, so we decided to go to a park we'd seen in Rexburg that had a bathroom near the road. 

When we got there, to my dismay, there was a group of mothers picnicking right by the bathrooms. I stood up and had Scotty check the back of my dress, and he confirmed that I would not want to be seen from behind. Indeed, the circumstances were unfortunate. 

I wasn't sure what to do. My graduation dress was now unusable, and we were 40 minutes from our hotel. My saving grace was that we'd been to our friends' cabin for a few days before we went to my graduation, and we still had the bag of dirty laundry in the trunk of the van. I was able to salvage a gross pair of cut-off workout pants that I'd used for pajamas at the cabin. We were also able to go to a Deseret Book where Scotty ran in and got me a new pair of garments. 

Meanwhile, I had to text my mom and tell her we were going to be significantly late for Bear World. 

While Scotty was in the store, I started considering how I was going to get out of my dress and into my other clothes. My dress had no zippers and could only be removed over the head, which was far too risky. So I had to sacrifice my dress. My favorite dress!

We pulled into a church parking lot. I sent my family to a grassy area to have a snack, and then I took a pair of scissors (one more reason to always keep scissors in the car), cut my dress at the waist, and removed everything from my bottom half and put it in a grocery bag. Then I put on my new garments, and my dirty cut-offs that smelled like camp-fire. I lifted the other half of my dress over my head, added it to the bag, and put on my BYU-Idaho t-shirt I'd purchased that morning, not knowing how desperately I would need it that day. 

Eventually we made it to Bear World. 

After that, we went to Walmart where I found a really ugly dress on clearance for $6. On my way into the store, my sandal broke, so I also snagged a cheap pair of red shoes. I went into the bathroom and changed my clothes, then Scotty drove me to BYU-Idaho where I attended convocation and commencement not being able to tell a soul that I'd just thrown my favorite dress in a dumpster in a church parking lot.

These fine ladies had no idea. 

And that, my friends, is what I refer to as "the incident."

Alternate titles: 

"The day I threw my dress in a Rexburg church dumpster"

"The time I shat myself on graduation day"

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Or is this all just an April Fool's Joke? I'll leave that to you to figure out.