Fact Check

What She Left Behind

Woman accidentally leaves a bag of waste in her lover's apartment?

Published May 4, 2009

Claim:

Claim:   Woman accidentally leaves a bag of waste in her lover's apartment.


LEGEND


Examples:


[Collected via e-mail, November 2007]

A co-worker told us this story of a friend of a friend.

Friend A and her friend B were at a local bar. Friend B spotted a fellow that she found interesting. They hooked up (as the kids say) and went back to his place where she spent the night.

The morning the fellow told her that he had to go to work, but that she could hang out as long as she wanted. He even made coffee for her. He told that when she left that she needn't worry about locking the door because it would lock behind her.

She hung around a while, ate breakfast, and used the bathroom. Unfortunately, she had plugged the toilet and the fellow had no plunger. She panicked.

All she could think to do was find a plastic bag and fish out the poop to unplug the toilet. She does that and now has a bag of poop to dispose of. She cleans the bathroom and gets ready to leave, figuring to throw the poop bag in the nearest dumpster.

She leaves the fellow a note telling him that he's a great guy and that she'd like to see him again. She leaves her phone number and heads out the door.

The door closes and locks behind her. Then she remembers that she forgot the bag of poop back in his apartment! He's going to think she's some kind of freak!

She heads home and immediately changes her phone number and hopes she never runs into him again.
 


[Collected via e-mail, April 2009]

A friend forwarded me this email. It is a hilarious story, but as it came from someone five people removed from her, I thought we should check it.

This is the story:

OK, I have so much work to do, but seriously HAVE to tell you this story. So, very convoluted, a friend of a colleague slept at some guys house this past Saturday night. They had hooked up once or twice before and she really liked him. So she slept there Saturday night, and he told her that he had something to do really early on Sunday, but to just relax and sleep in, and to let herself out because the door would automatically lock behind her. So she woke up, and he was gone, so she was just getting her things together and went to the bathroom, and pooped. Well, then she realized the toilet was completely broken, like not just clogged, but completely broken. So, she freaks out for a while and then, for whatever reason, she decides to get a little plastic grocery type bag and scoop out the poop and take it with her when she left. So she gets her things and leaves him a note on his kitchen counter that says, Thanks for having me, it was good to see you, etc etc. P.S. Your toilet is broken. And then leaves. And then realizes the second the door locks behind her that she has left the bag of poop on the counter NEXT to the note. So the guy is going to come home, or came home, since this was Sunday, and found a note that said your toilet is broken with a bag of poop next to it.

Doesn't that make you die a little on the inside??


 

Origins:   An element common to many embarrassment legends is our squeamishness about bodily functions. Everyone sweats, farts, poops, burps, blows their nose, etc., but we don't want to acknowledge that other people — particularly women — actually do so. Not only do we not want to witness such functions taking place, we don't even want to see evidence (e.g., sweat-stained clothes, used tissues) indicating they've occurred in the past. In fact, the mere existence of commercial products to deal with these functions is fodder for embarrassment, as evidenced by legends dealing with the purchase or use of deodorant, tampons, and feminine napkins.

Excretory functions are especially taboo, and the tale offered here presents the case of a woman who is mortified when circumstances beyond her control force her to leave the product of a bowel movement in the apartment of a man she has just spent the night with. Even worse, a calamitous chain of events results in

the offending substance's remaining behind in a completely inappropriate place (the kitchen counter), accompanied by a note that — in conjunction with the presence of a bag full of doo-doo — might well be interpreted by the apartment's owner as an extremely crude "I don't ever want to see you again" message (although the intent behind the note was just the opposite) or as an indication that the writer has some bizarre predilections. So complete is the woman's embarrassment that she doesn't so much as contemplate attempting to explain what actually happened — even though she feels the man she has just spent with night with is "a great guy" and that "she'd like to see him again," she gives up on him and immediately changes her phone number so that he can't contact her.

That the characters in this legend are described as having just met through a casual hook-up might be considered merely a plot point: The embarrassment quotient is greatly enhanced by the circumstance that these two people don't know each other very well, whereas a couple in an established relationship would likely have a much better opportunity for sorting out that the incident was the result of accident rather than design. But that factor might also be considered an amplification of the legend's theme: It points out that we have no qualms about engaging in the most intimate forms of sexual activity with relative strangers, yet we paradoxically remain so squeamish about other bodily functions that a relationship cannot withstand even accidental exposure to them.

This legend is dramatized in the following advertisement for Sure Lock, touted as "Based on a true story":

Last updated:   4 January 2014

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.