JOSH TATE (PART TWO)

Part two of Josh Tate's autobiographical introduction. Read part one here.

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I slipped into the passenger seat and we began a normal night of stopping cars, processing drunks, and responding to various crises and crimes. At approximately 3 am, as we came back through the city after a trip to the correctional facility, I suddenly felt the need to pee.

I asked Couture to pull over in a vacant lot so I could use a convenient snow bank. I never saw it coming, and I’ve never experienced anything like this before or since, but as I began to pee, my bowels evacuated themselves into my crisp, dry-cleaned police uniform.

Of course it was the raisins, eaten by that kitten, ripped too early from its mother’s care.

I stood there in front of the snow bank, raisin poop oozing out of my underpants and sliding down my legs, into my boots. My mind was blank. Panic is a sudden and/or overwhelming terror that destroys a person’s capacity for self-help, and that described me perfectly. There was no way to extricate myself from the situation without considerable damage to my reputation and standing in the law enforcement community. How would this read in Cpl. Couture’s written report, I wondered? “At approximately 0300 hours patrolman Tate advised this officer that he needed to pee… A short time later he returned to the cruiser and advised that he had defecated in his uniform.”

Never had I uttered such fervent prayers to my God. I prayed for some miracle, some diversion. It would have been preferable for aliens to suddenly land and begin their war against mankind than for me to walk back to that cruiser and try to explain what had happened… to explain the poop in my pants.

But after a few moments, I decided there was no way to avoid the inevitable embarrassment. I waddled back to the cruiser and told Cpl. Couture, “Uh…I don’t know how to say this but I…uh…well, you see…I pooped my pants.”

I had never wanted to swear so badly in my life. Somehow, it seemed worse that I had to say “poop” instead of “s***.”

--TO BE CONTINUED--