Whole Lotta Poops Goin On…

Sandy writes:
Hi Bob! I have this problem I hope you can help me with. My husband, Steve, has the smelliest poops ever known to man! Sometimes the smell just floats out of the bathroom and makes the whole house small like a smelly gas station bathroom. In the winter time, we can’t open the windows because its too cold out and I feel like I’m trapped in a closet with a dirty kitty litter box! I put up with this for over two years now and despite my affections for him, with winter approaching I just don’t know if I can take it anymore. I just might leave him because of his smelly putrid poops! Help save my marriage!!!

Dear Sandy,
Thanks for taking the time to Ask Bob a question! What a perfect question for this website. Since the answer is weird, and it involves crap…it’s the perfect question. I can’t believe it took 20 years for us to finally get a weird-crap question at a website called weirdcrap!

From my own experience I know just what you’re going thru. Back in my college days, I met an nice girl and yada, yada, yada, we ended back at my place. Since this isn’t an X-rated column, I’ll just say she stayed all night. I got her number before she left the next morning and things were lookin’ pretty good. Until I noticed a rotten smell that spread all over the whole apartment. It smelled like an animal died and was rotting.

I opened the windows, but the stench wouldn’t leave. It was summer and I didn’t have air conditioning, so the heat and humidity sure didn’t help. Very poor circulation in my basement apartment. That smell…I thought my god, she’s nice and purdy, but the smell…she must be rotten in the insides or sumthin’. I figured if she had rotten insides, then if I continued to have sex with her insides would turn rotten too. But she was so nice and purdy, I didn’t know what to do!

The next day, I discovered slime running down the side of my fridge. On top was a bunch of rotten bananas I forgot about. Whew, what a smell…I never knew if you let bananas rot long enough it would get that bad. It was nice and hot up there because it was an old square fridge from the 30s that just had a square metal section inside for the freezer, not even a freezer door! It also had a big round motor on top that let out all the heat. I think that accelerated the rotting, at least I’m sure it didn’t help.

But that was the culprit, she wasn’t rotten at all!

However, your problem is a little different. Sounds like your hubby got rotten insides, but don’t worry, there’s a solution!

You may have heard of the “courtesy flush.” This is where you’re in a public bathroom and you flush after the main event is over, so the smell doesn’t linger. This helps, but it won’t do the trick for you. We need to do more than that. Filling the room with air fresheners isn’t enough either. I’m not too fond of those fresheners, I can smell the chemicals.

The answer to your problem lies in SCIENCE!

After you have a dump and flush, the air with the smell (and bacteria) swirls in the toilet as it flushes. Centrifugal force pushes the air with all the smell out into the room. This is no good. We want to get rid of as much of that stuff as we can. So, what you (or he) have to do is expel most the waste material (poop), take a few wipes, and stand up, close the lid, then flush. This will pull most the smell (and bacteria) down with the water. Then open the lid, sit down and get the main cleaning done.

Try it, you’ll find about 80% of the smell is gone.

But why does this work?

When you flush, the water goes down the drain. When the lid is closed, air goes from the room into the bowl, this pushes the air with the smell down the drain. This is because when the water goes down, the space that was filled with water is now filled with air. If air didn’t enter the bowl, a vacuum would be created inside the bowl. The bowl would have to be airtight for the vacuum hold, but it’s not. There are spaces under the toilet seat and the lid. So instead of forming a vacuum, air seeps into the bowl to fill the space that was filled by water.

Technically, a vacuum is made, which is the actual force that pushes the air in, but in the sense the vacuum doesn’t hold, we’ll just say there is no vacuum because of the air that rushes in to fill the void.

And there you have it. Huey Lewis was wrong, the power of love won’t save you marriage, but the power of physics will!