A Cautionary Tale of Lactose Intolerance
An Installment in the Semi-True Stories Series
This is a story told many times at family gatherings. To maintain the dignity of the victim, I have deleted my brother’s name.
It is a fine spring day in Kentucky. Having recently begun his student teaching, my brother also took responsibility for coaching the junior varsity girls’ softball team. While the girls were loaded on a bus for the 45-minute ride to the game, my brother had the luxury of driving his own car. Anticipating several hours of coaching after a long day of teaching, he stopped at a local mini-market on the way to pick up a few snack items for the road.
Now my brother’s taste, especially in snack food, will never be called exotic. He sticks closely to the standards; chips, soda, Slurpee, candy bar. For some inexplicable reason, on this day, he purchased one quart of chocolate milk.
With the sunroof open, warm sunshine streaming in, and the radio blaring, my brother sped along, drinking his chocolate milk with abandon. Refreshed, he pulled into the parking lot, ready to coach some softball. He met up with his team, and the first game of a doubleheader began. All was well with the world.
It was a beautiful day for a game, the grass was green and freshly cut, and the infield was only moderately rutted. His young team took the field, and he settled into the dugout. The game was progressing nicely until the bottom of the second inning. Somewhere between the first and third out, my brother’s stomach started low rumblings like thunder off in the distance. He took little notice and continued to coach, encouraging his players and keeping track of the game statistics. As the third inning began, the stomach thunder moved closer, and tiny cramps and gas pains began to twist at his intestines and poke sharply at his sides.
My brother, a man of significant gastric experience, began to worry that perhaps trouble was on the horizon. Still, he was confident that a few moments of discomfort and a silent and stealthy release of the building gas pressure would solve his problem. He stepped out of the dugout during the fourth inning to stretch his legs and stroll down the baseline to safety. His plan was to use the “phantom fart” technique, where one lets fly and then moves away quickly distancing themselves from their odiferous cloud and any potential social impacts. Once past the third base, my brother relaxed, allowing the unruly vapors to stream forth and providing him with a sense of liberation. To my brother’s horror, the wind shifted at a critical moment, cutting off his escape and pushing the stench of his discharge towards his unsuspecting athletes. A serendipitous strike-out and the ensuing transition to the field saved my brother’s dignity.
Cramps rolled across my brother’s gut, gaining in intensity and making it painful to sit down. The potent odor of his first expulsion meant that he could not safely be around his players, especially in the tight space of the dugout. There was only one course of action — coach the remainder of the game from third base.
The wind increased, blowing down the foul line and into the sparsely populated lands of left field. Wave after wave of noxious dairy-induced fumes left my brother’s rear end. Grand, green clouds of methane issued forth. The spring wind took hold of these putrid billows, herding them safely away from the players. Despite his best efforts, the copious discharges neither relieved the pain nor diminished the volume of noxious gas. Real trouble was on the way.
Mercifully, junior varsity softball has only six innings, and as far as my brother was concerned, the final out could not come fast enough. Game one finished, and my brother quickly shook hands and made a beeline for the locker room. He arrived in the coach’s bathroom in the nick of time. His pants were hardly down, and he had barely made contact with the toilet seat before a torrent of foul, brown froth exploded forth. He sagged forward, head in hands, elbows on knees breathing an immense sigh of relief. With newfound confidence and comfort, our hero washed his hands and prepared for the next game.
The second game was a much different affair than the first. For safety reasons, my brother resumed his position on the third base line. This was a prudent decision as several of the gaseous after-shocks would have been very embarrassing. Otherwise, the game proceeded with little fanfare, and the team completed its sweep of the doubleheader. Once again, all was well with the world. The girls boarded the bus back to school, and my brother loaded the equipment into his car. He took care of a few last-minute administrative items and then started the journey back.
It is important to note that my brother worked in a very rural part of the state, so the scenic drive was also quite solitary. As he retraced his route, a familiar and unwelcome stirring occurred in his stomach. Within minutes, gut thunder was once again rolling across my brother’s intestinal plains. Plumes of acrid gas exploded from his bottom. Apparently, the misery of game one was simply a prelude to what was to come on the drive home.
He was determined to make it back to school before stopping, so he endured the ever more violent thumping, gurgling, and grinding of his insides. Sweat poured down his face, and he held the steering wheel in a death grip to stave off the wrenching pain in his side. Each mile was agony. As he came to the ten-mile mark, it became evident that any further expulsions would result in an uncontrollable release. The situation was critical. Thankfully the school was close.
Desperate and in excruciating pain, he screeched into a parking space behind the gym and leaped from his car. The equipment room door was locked solidly, and no one responded to his pounding on the door. Frantically, he sprinted for the next door only to discover that it too was closed and locked. He had no choice but to run around the school building. With cheeks clenched and bowels complaining, he skidded to a stop at the front door. Hair matted to his head and breathing heavily, he knocked twice, and a school custodian admitted him. Salvation was at hand.
Mustering all the self-control he possessed, he calmly made his way to the teacher’s lounge bathroom, a place of privacy and safety. After the trials and tribulations of the last 45 minutes, he had hope. The teacher’s lounge was unlocked and unoccupied, and the bathroom was but a few steps away. He was going to make it.
Or so he thought. As his fingers wrapped around the brushed aluminum handle, his bowels gave way in one explosive heave. His underwear, shorts, and socks were a complete loss. He slid quickly into the room, locking the door as he penguin-walked to the toilet. Stripping off the soiled clothes, he buried them in the wastebasket, camouflaging them with a heavy layer of crumpled paper towels. Fortunately, he had had the good sense to bring his gym bag with him. He cleaned up as best he could and changed back into his work pants and shirt.
While the air in the bathroom was hardly breathable and the wastebasket was full of hazardous waste, little else remained to indicate what had happened. My brother quietly and calmly left the bathroom and teacher’s lounge without seeing another person and walked out the school’s front door. As far as he knows, no one ever found out who defiled the teacher’s lounge bathroom.
Oddly enough, this entire experience has not put my brother off the occasional draught of chocolate milk.
“A Cautionary Tale” is the first in an occasional series of semi-true stories drawn from the adventures, oddities, and quirks of my childhood.
