If there’s anything Stephen King taught us, it’s that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy that tries to kill his family with an ax.  Sitting in a chair and writing long enough is a surefire way to drive yourself into and up a wall.

It took long enough but I found my means of decompression with Parkour classes.

Parkour is intended to be less a sport and more a philosophy – a philosophy of overcoming obstacles both physical and mental.  I’ve been doing it for about two months now.  In that span of time, I’ve climbed shit; jumped over shit; and rolled over shit and it was only this past week that that possibly became more literal than I ever feared.

Our class takes place in a wide-open space of a huge gymnasium.  Before we can begin our exercises, we usually watch the tail end of a gymnastics session.  I can attest to the fact that while this was going on this past week, there was most definitely no poop on the floor.

As we carried on, things went by as they usually did on the surface: normally.  Each of us sweated through warm-ups and some practice of the weekly technique being taught.  Then, while our instructors were setting up for the next part of class, I hear something, something I needed a double take on:

“Is that poop on the floor?”

I hear it all too well but am too shocked to be certain.  Sure enough, confirmation follows with repetition:

“Did someone poop on the floor?”

Even from where I stood, I could make out a small, distinctly brown pile off in the distance.  But I did not want to believe.

Before long, an orange cone was set over the pile, ironically making its position more obvious.  A splinter in my mind was quickly becoming a jutting plank.  With rusty nails.

During the break, I sat with my fellow students and quickly inquired about it.  I wanted someone to negate my certainty, but I knew in my bones this wasn’t in the cards.

Some people insisted that it might have been brought in by someone, an errant bit of feces on their shoe.  Even this would have been a source of solace, that this crap was not actually wrought by a human ass.  Butt alas, no!

The image was burned into my brain and it was quite clearly a pile, not a smear or stain like it would have been coming off a shoe.  Unless that shoe had the disgusting – albeit amazing – ability to poop, that poop was obviously a pile and hence manmade.

I couldn’t focus for the rest of the class.  A whirlwind of thoughts swirled in my head.  How could anyone actually have so little dignity as to poop in such a large room with such a large group of people?  Who did it?  And would they shit again?  No one was safe.

And as I hopped around the room, practicing my precision jumping, I acted out nightmare scenarios in my head.  Leaping from one elevated beam to another, only to land on a pile of poop and slip to a very disgusting end.

That night, I left the gym with no closure.  Sure, my physical abilities were probably a bit sharper, but I still had no idea who committed the fecal crime.  My vigilance had to be maintained into the following week.  Which, at this point, is now this week.

Today.  I must discover who the pooper is.