True Confessions

Ever done something so terrible, so reprehensible, that it has gnawed away at your conscience for years? You know the sort of thing - a terrible injustice you perpetrated against someone which has kept you awake at nights for years? The kind of thing which you know that you just have to confess if you are ever to find any kind of peace. Well that's not what I'm going to tell you about today. Having said that, what I am going to reveal does involve an act which some might consider foul and depraved, Not that I've ever lost any sleep over it myself. Anyway, getting to the point - have you ever encountered a piece of regular behaviour on someone's part that, for no discernible reason, intensely irritated you? Well, that's the situation I found myself in many years ago at a certain University. Now, my bowels are pretty regular, so most days that I was working in the library I'd find myself in the toilets at around the same time, (these were the new toilets, you understand, not the old ones which had some magnificent graffiti on the walls. But that's another story). Well, every day, around the same time, this bloke would come in, go to the cubicle next to the one I was just coming out of, roll down the toilet roll and blow his nose on it.

Now, God knows why, but I found this incredibly annoying. I know, there's no earthly reason why it should have annoyed me, but it did. I mean, I didn't even know the guy. But, for some unfathomable reason, it really got to me. Eventually, I came up with a plan to get back at him. It was incredibly simple. Basically, I got to the toilet early, went into the cubicle he always blew his nose in, took my regular dump, unrolled a length of paper, but didn't tear it off, wiped my arse on it, then rolled it back, so that the smear wasn't visible. I then vacated the cubicle, with the intention of hiding in my usual cubicle and coming out just as he blew his nose. However, my nerve went and I legged it before he arrived. Consequently, I can only imagine his reaction when he looked down at his toilet tissue snot rag to find it stained with shit. All I know is that he didn't do his nose-blowing schtick again, at least not when I was in the toilet. I'd like to think that he hurried off to see a doctor, convinced that he'd suffered some bizarre form of internal prolapse. So, am I ashamed of what I did? Quite frankly, no. I'm only sharing it with you now because something reminded me of it the other day and I laughed so much at the memory I nearly shat myself. I could put it down to the alcohol-fuelled recklessness of undergraduate life. Except that I was a post-graduate student at the time. And stone cold sober. Would I do it again? Quite possibly, if someone irritated me enough. So, be careful what you blow your nose on.