As part of my fortieth birthday celebration, I spent last Sunday shopping with my mom at Clackamas Town Center. We shopped until the mall closed and then Mom treated me to dinner at the nearby Olive Garden. I used to really like Olive Garden. Now I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat there again... (Wouldn't you just know it, that right after posting "The Grossest Thing Ever," something much worse, much more gross, would happen?)

The dining area in the Olive Garden is separated into several "rooms." On this night, in the "room" around the corner from us there was a fairly large group (eight or ten people or so) of middle aged folks. Across the aisle from us was a young family group of two couples and three little kids. Seated at the table in front of us was an attractive young couple. Near the end of our meal a very heavy older man was leaving the group of middle aged folks. Walking was a struggle for him and I could hear him huffing and puffing from the effort. Suddenly, he stopped right behind my chair and in a very guttural voice kind of grunted, "Uh oh." At that very same moment the overwhelming stench of... excrement just about made me throw up. I was seriously close to a round-trip visit to hurl-ville.

The smell was horrible. Vile. Unbearable. My mind raced to try to explain what had just happened. Maybe one of the little kids from across the aisle had a diaper issue? Maybe Puffy just tooted, right? Right? But then he gestured for the manager to come over and since he was right behind me, I heard him ask the manager, "Could you have someone follow me out and clean up after me?" (WTF??) The manager said something to the effect of "I understand, sir" and promptly disappeared. Puffy continued on his way, walking between our table and the young families table, then past the attractive couple. And with every step he took, a glob of poo fell out of the bottom of his pant leg into a little pile on the floor. EVERY STEP.

Step...plop...step...plop...

Puffy walked...very...slowly...leaving behind him an unbelievable trail of shit. The wait staff was somehow completely unaware of what was happening and in rushing around to deliver lasagna proceeded to walk through it. And track it ALL OVER. My mom and I looked at each other in complete horror. I am not making this up. This really happened. My mom said "LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!" We very carefully watched our steps and hurried out of there as fast as was possible.

The path of poo piles continued right through the waiting area and out the door. I cannot possibly describe to you the copious amounts of human waste that we are talking about here. As we were walking out, a man walking in pointed to the smears of shit on the floor and asked the twelve year old hostess, "WHAT is THAT?" She looked at a perfectly innocent gentleman who was waiting for a table, and standing unfortunately close to one of the piles of crap, and tried to blame it on him. "Oh, I think it must have come in on his shoe..." I tried to explain to her what had really happened but I'm not sure she got it because I was telling her as I was walking out. No way was I going to stop to tell her what had happened. We just really wanted to get the hell out of there. (Besides, Puffy did tell a manager, right?)

My poor mom had to pee but we were so desperate to get out of there that she decided against using the restroom there. We drove to the Target right by the restaurant and used their facility. On the way out of Olive Garden I was making her laugh so hard she almost had an accident of her own. I asked mom, "Did you want to sit in the shitting section or the non-shitting section?" I think we were seriously in shock. We found ourselves looking down at the floor and watching our step in Target because we were so traumatized. And when we realized what we were doing we started laughing so hard people probably thought we were drunk.

Afterward I just kept shuddering because it was almost impossible to make the awful images and thoughts go away. Thoughts like: What kind of gastrointestinal distress has to happen for you to shit yourself? What the hell did he order? Did he have pre-existing "issues" and maybe his "Depends" turned out to be not-so-dependable? Puffy had to then go out to his car and (squish) sit down. How many different health codes are violated when there is poop on the floor of your restaurant dining room and your staff is tromping through it? EEW. Shudder. (And fellow bloggers, how DO you type a retching noise, anyway?)

I told my husband what happened and he now calls Olive Garden "Poop Garden." If I had a disgusting association, like this one, with all of my favorite foods, I would be super-model thin in a matter of weeks. Was this karma? Did I spend too much that day at the mall? All I know is that this was one of the most disgusting things that I have ever experienced. And I know disgusting. This was right up there with when the neighbor boy peed on my head. Almost as bad as when a seagull pooped on my head. And if you haven't had your fill of doodey stories, you can look forward to my posts on those incidents...