Allow me to add my letter to the daily occupant of the back stall in the men’s bathroom of the Sunset Valley Barnes & Noble in Austin, Texas:

Although we’ve never met face-to-face, let me assure you of the pleasure we take at the panicked look on Peter the Barista’s face when one of the employees whispers in his ear and he is once again called to gather arms in the form of a plunger and towels and dash with all due haste to the men’s room. Or of the greater pleasure experienced when, having consumed a Venti Americano and soft pretzel, my bowels suddenly urge me to the men’s room where I pause at the door of the stall, detecting a certain scatalogical scent, peek inside and am compelled to return with even greater haste to the coffee bar to inform Peter the Barista that he must, once again, take arms, and then sit back at my laptop, cheeks squeezed tightly to prevent my own dam from breaking for the next twenty minutes which is the time it will take him to break apart that mammoth log jam, I mean something akin to a landslide from the peak of Mount Everest to the base camp below, acres and tons of debris packed into one pungent sculpture, so that the other customers may once again relieve themselves, whether in leisure, or, in my case, haste.

Or the conversation that inevitably follows, “how the hell does he produce a pile that large and dense in twenty four hours,” a question we could not answer until the election of our current President and the many off-the-cuff free form press conferences that followed.

You, sir, you prepared us, may I be so forward as to say, steeled us for the stomach churning shit show to come, and for that we thank you.