Because @ChuckWendig asked me a few days ago, would you guys like me to tell you the story of the grossest thing that's ever happened to me and why my gross-out threshold is so high today?

Okay, I'll tell you.

(But seriously, mute this thread if you have a weak stomach.) /1

Back in 2004, the year after an ill-fated stint in Chicago (which is whole other story) but before I moved to TX for grad school, I moved back home to live with my parents. I did not like this turn of events, but I had wounds to lick so I went to ground (Chicago was...a lot). /2

I needed a job to pay bills and not feel absolutely worthless (I don't know what it's like not to work) but there weren't a lot of jobs in rural PA for a recent college grad with a degree in English. Times were tough. /3

So I job-hunted & eventually found the only job outside of fast food or stocking grocery store shelves that required zero experience: I signed up to be a caregiver for the Pennsylvania Association For Retarded Citizens, a.k.a. PARC. Don't yell at me, I didn't make the name. /4

PARC had care houses all over the town for people with mental (and some physical) disabilities. Some houses had groups of high-functioning Down's adults who had jobs & otherwise lived independently but just needed some help. /5

Other homes had profoundly disabled residents who required 'round the clock care: Advanced cerebral palsy, extreme cognitive impairment and mental disability, wheelchair-bound, tube fed, diapers - the whole thing.

That was the kind of house I worked in. /6

I had no idea what I was in for & the work was hard. It required a lot of physical exertion, a lot of learning how to navigate the world with special needs kids & a LOT of patience - they were non-verbal so they couldn't articulate when they were upset. I was bitten. A lot. /7

Now, I call them "kids," but keep in mind they were adults. They simply had the mental capacity of children - infants or toddlers, really, and they were small because of the CP, so they were our "kids." But they were still adults with all of the adult bodily functions. /8

I saw boners when bathing or changing diapers. Many of those. And the two girls, they had their periods. One of them, Tammy, was the most mentally impaired of the three, basically an infant in a grown woman's body. But oh, boy, did she have heavy periods. /9

And poor thing, she was always *miserable.* She got so sick. It was awful. We were always very careful with how we handled her when she was on her period, always gentle and slow with our movements. Because she always got sick and threw up her formula if we weren't. /10

One afternoon, I could tell she was getting close to starting a bad period as she'd been fussy all afternoon and making her "hurting" face. So I gave her a good half hour after evening tube feeding to let it settle before showering her & I skipped her physical therapy. /11

Then I wheeled her into the bathroom. Now. The bathroom in this house was modified. One entire side of it was a walk-in shower, big enough to accommodate a wheelchair and a few people maneuvering and long enough for a shower bed of blue nylon mesh & white PVC piping. /12

I carefully undressed Tammy in her wheelchair outside the shower and then picked her up to transfer her to the shower bed. Now, Tammy's growth had been severely stunted, but she was solid, and I'm not big - only 5' tall and, at that time, maybe 105 lbs. /13

So getting her from the wheelchair to the shower bed was always a real "lift with the legs," all parts of the body on deck kinda situation. And maybe that's why what happened next happened. Because my back hurt & I was tired so I paused for a moment once I got her on the bed. /14

And it was that exact moment, as I was leaning forward & my arms were trapped underneath her that she...erupted.

That's the only way I know how to describe it. It was an eruption of the body.

I'd never seen anything like it & I doubt I'll ever see anything like it again. /15

Thick, first-day-of-period menstrual blood, runny shit, piss, vomit and spit all cascaded over my bare arms and sluiced up my biceps, splattered my face, my glasses, sprayed my shirt. I was literally covered in every bodily fluid imaginable from a woman. /16

Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? A moment in which you were so transcendently furious or horrified that your mind just kinda checks out for a sec? That's exactly what I did then. My brain could not process what had just happened and I just...blanked out. /17

It felt like it lasted minutes but it was only for a split second, but in that split second, something in me just kinda...broke and accepted it. I snapped back into reality and started laughing aloud. One of those "maybe it's funny but maybe you're also gonna snap" laughs. /18

And then I heaved a sigh (noting, vaguely, that I swallowed some indeterminate body fluid as I did), extracted my arms from under Tammy, reached for the shower hose, stripped my shirt off, and calmly rinsed off my arms, chest, and face. /19

I finished showering her & left my wet shirt hanging on a towel hook. Walked out of the bathroom in my bra and shorts, shirt missing and hair soaking wet. The other caregiver in the house took one look at me. "What ha--oh NO." I just nodded. Calm. Honestly calm. /20

Because I tell you what, I walked into the bathroom that day one person and came out another. I was CHANGED. That split second where I blanked out broke me in same way. There is almost NOTHING that can gross me out now. I accept it all. /21

I liken it to that episode of SOUTH PARK where Cartman sees the people with butts for faces and it's so funny to him that his sense of humor is permanently broken and he can't find anything funny after that. That's me with my gross-out threshold now. /22

A few years later, I was a server at a restaurant A sloppy drunk girl staggered into the server's entrance, where I was punching in an order, and vomited everywhere, splattering all over my legs. I calmly finished typing in my order before wiping it off. /23

A boyfriend once bled all over me. Shrug. Bag of garbage split & sprayed my legs with rotting food. K. A drunk took her tampon out and threw it into the garbage instead of flushing it & missed the garbage can. We talked about THAT, but I shrugged and threw it away. /24

None of it fazed me and it likely never will, for I had already experienced the singular most disgusting thing that could ever have happened to me that day in the shower of the care home. I was transcended. Purified. Baptized in the flood from Tammy's erupting body. /25

Anyway, that's the story of the grossest thing that I have ever experienced and why it's incredibly hard to rattle me in a gross-out contest. THE END!