comments to the Court while trying to maintain some semblance of professional dignity, retreated to the nearest men’s room, and tried to make temporary repairs. But I was without the requisite stickum. Then I hit the road. If I’d had siren and flashers, I’d have used them. By the time I got home, my good suit trousers were a lost cause. They went into a sealed trash bag and thence into oblivion. I cleaned myself up as best I could in the shower, and then slapped on another belly-bag. With extra stickum. There were similar incidents over the three-month period of my unholy enslavement to the Almighty Colostomy, but none quite as embarrassing as the Wilkes-Barre Incident. To this day, I don’t know whether the judge got wind of my predicament (if you’ll excuse the expression). If he did, I hope he got a good story or two out of it. To make a long yarn short, the jolly young surgeon opened me up again three months later and reconnected my carburetor to the exhaust. I was happy to ditch the colostomy supplies. When I went to see the surgeon for a follow-up visit, I told him the story of my Wilkes-Barre Bankruptcy Court experience. “When something like that happens,” he told me with a grin, “you just say, ‘behold the human animal.’” All I can say is: It takes guts to make a confession like this. When I was in the Navy, we’d have called this story a no-shitter, but in this case that wouldn’t be accurate.
Editor’s Note: Assuming you have read this far, please know that Mr. Page is a member of the Reading law firm of Austin, Boland, Connor & Giorgi and is the author of Up Home Book One: Stedman 1903-1909, published in October 2007 and is the first of what is intended to be a collection of three historical novels set in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal country.
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