The smell was horrendous … and I grew up on a farm.

My wife’s friend stuck her head through the crack she made peeling open our bathroom door and whispered, “Psst, psst, psst, psst,” like she had a secret.

She didn’t.

This wasn’t a secret to anyone in the house and maybe, just maybe, to people the next block over. She’d stopped up our toilet—again.

As a long-time toilet owner, I know the signs of a multi-flush bowlgasm. The loud moans followed by a several muffled kerwooshes followed by silence. The rustling of paper and the scuffling of feet as water slowly seeps under the door. Yeah, I know those signs—there are women in the house.

Like many men, I have the distinction of never clogging a toilet. Well, at least in someone’s home. There was the one time at a steakhouse, but this isn’t about me. It’s about women and my bathroom.

I come from a family of proud toilet sitters. Growing up, Dad equipped our bathroom with a telephone, TV, and magazine rack (he only thought he was hiding that “Penthouse” between all those copies of “Today’s Farmer”). Considering all the time Dad spent in the bathroom, I’m surprised he didn’t have a stocked beer fridge in there, too.

“Do you have a plunger?” my wife’s friend whispered.

Not for me, I almost said. I’m Fiber-Man. Armed with my Colon of Justice, I defend toilets and Port-A-Potties everywhere.

I’ve found, mostly through trial and error that has lead to some cold, conversation-free nights, that women don’t think it’s funny when they clog a toilet. But it is.

“Did you clog the toilet?” I asked in my outside voice.

“Shhh,” my wife hushed. “She’s embarrassed.”

I could see why. Our house smelled like a Klingon battle cruiser on taco night. Women can tease a guy about the hair growing out of his ears, the hair not growing on his head, and the Jell-O where the washboard abs should be, but we can never acknowledge women have bowel movements.

They do.

“She should be,” I whispered, grabbing the plunger from the back of the hall closet and marching toward the land of the dead, thinking “I bet it looks like Dagobah in there.”

Just for the record, it didn’t look like Yoda’s swamp planet. It was worse. The bathroom was a lot like a gang hit at a sewage treatment plant in a Quentin Tarantino film.

A national survey commissioned by the Scott Tissue Clog Clinic (Seriously? Scott Tissue has a research branch dedicated to this?) found 57 percent of people asked believe men clog the toilet more than women. Given personal experience, I can only conclude that 57 percent of people in that survey were women who don’t like to admit they poop.

Guys, there are rules women live by that seem alien to us because … well because they are alien. These rules defy all tenets of Earth physics, biology, and psychology. They are Chick Rules and it hurts my head to list them:

1. I think Cobb salads are fattening … if anyone’s watching.
2. Yes, my hair always looks like I just came from a salon. Thank you for asking.
3. Gravity? Isn’t that a John Mayer song?
4. There are two types of emotions: ones that go well with ice cream and ones that go well with sticking pins into voodoo dolls.
5. I never (admit I) laugh at Larry the Cable Guy.
6. Care Bears should have voting rights.
7. I need to sit for 20 minutes in front of a mirror, armed with everything Estée Lauder has to offer so I can look natural for you, silly.
8. I don’t have biological functions—ever. I don’t even breathe because breathing only leads to bad breath. Sure, Chick Rules are sexist, but don’t blame me, I didn’t make them up. Especially Rule Number 9
9. If you’re a man, by the time you understand rules one through eight, it’ll be too late.

“I’m so sorry,” my wife’s friend said as I walked out of the bathroom like the survivor of “Alien vs. Predator.” I just nodded. No man has ever clogged a toilet in my house, but my wife’s friends—and my mother-in-law—have stopped up every toilet in every place my wife and I have lived.

How can people who don’t eat, don’t digest, and don’t poop clog my toilet?

As a four-year-old I dropped Hot Wheels into the toilet just to watch Dad fish them out. Wait, is that how women stop up toilets? Are they all eating Hot Wheels?
“That’s OK,” I said to her. “You’ve been to our house before.”

My wife frowned. Yep, I could tell it was going to be another cold, conversation-free night.

***
Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to the Show-Me State’s Most Spirited Spots,” is available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or tsup.truman.edu. Visit Jason’s Web site, www.jasonoffutt.com, for his other books.