Jamie stands in his backyard. It is night, and he has just brought a load of wood up from the shed. Before he walks inside, he looks up and watches the clouds rush past a full moon. The speed at which they fly so amazes Jamie, the he nearly forgets about the wind. It is blowing a severe gale.
"Holy shit," Jamie says out loud as a gust literally pushes him a step forward. Wind, he thinks to himself, must be the most uncomfortable thing in the world--it is impossible to be suave in the wind.
He glances up at the moon again and is suddenly struck with a question: how did astronauts poop in space? While the scenario tickles him at first, he becomes slightly obsessed with the idea and goes back inside.
"Ami!" He shouts. "How did astronauts do a poo?"
Normally, this would be a strange question. Why would Jamie's girlfriend know about the bowel movements of astronauts? As it turns out, Ami has been reading Moon Dust, by Andrew Smith. The book is a series of interviews with the surviving Americans who walked on the moon. So asking her about space poos was not so dumb.
"What?!" Ami shouted from the bathroom. She was taking a shower and hated it when Jamie interrupted with inane questions. "I hope he didn't say what I think he said," Ami thought.
"Astronauts. How did they poop?" Jamie asked again, more quietly this time as he was closer to Ami. In fact, he was practically in the shower with her. The mist floated onto his jacket forming droplets that began to pool and pull the dirt to the floor.
"Jamie, you're tracking mud all over the bathroom. Get out." The shampoo was thick in Ami's hair and reminded Jamie of meringue on a lemon pie. He was momentarily distracted, but remembered his question.
"I'm not leaving until you tell me about astronaut poop." He said firmly. Ami recognised this tone of voice. He was being stubborn simply for the sake of being stubborn.
"Astronauts," she sighed while rinsing the shampoo from her hair, "first got completely naked. They took off their suits, their boots, their helmets--everything until they were floating around in their birthday suits. Then they held a bag to their bums, and pooped into it as best they could." She squirted a handful of conditioner into her hand and began rubbing it into her hair.
Jamie began to imagine the subtle difficulties of pooping in space. The whole no gravity thing would be a trick, he though. An image appeared vividly in his mind of Buzz Aldrin, buck naked, trying to catch a great big turd in a bag while bumping into Neil and the others. He's weightless, the bag's weightless--the poop, of course, would be weightless, too. The whole endeavor required being very comfortable with each other in and out of their underwear.
It’s impossible to be suave while pooping in space.
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