Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!

You know the story…it’s Christmas Vacation month here at F.M.S!

Ellen: What are you looking at?
Clark: Oh, the silent majesty of a winter's morn... the clean, cool chill of the holiday air... and an asshole in his bathrobe, emptying a chemical toilet into my sewer...
Eddie: Shitter was full!
Clark: Ah, yeah. You checked our shitters, honey?


How could the final pre-Christmas quote be anything other than this?? It’d be criminal!

As this month has shown, there are many things to be learned from Christmas Vacation right down to this foul-mouthed one liner. No, it’s not that Randy Quaid really is crazy. Well, not just that anyhow.

Santa?

This is a deep and meaningful piece of the C.V. masterpiece. In this scene, Cousin Eddie symbolizes the Everyman…the regular, non-elite struggling in quiet desperation against his own PR goals. Not all of his yearly goals were met. I doubt he drank all of the Meister Brau he had planned. He’s collected a year’s worth of successes and failures (and parole violations) that need to be emptied in order to start fresh next year. In short, his shitter was full. As Lance Armstrong said, ‘it’s not about the poop’ (or something like that). It’s a metaphor for how we carry around the weight of a bad training experience, an injury or a poor race performance. Heck, some of us even carry around low expectations of our own abilities. We internalize and walk around with this baggage until it bogs us down until we can’t move…like if our heads have been sewn to the carpet.

Our shitters are full this time of year. You don’t want to carry that into the New Year so that it keeps hanging around like an unidentified lip fungus.

Grab some Meister Brau, open the spicket, and let a year’s worth of shit drain away. New race schedules will be written! New training plans executed! New PR’s to set…and yes, new disappointments to refill the shitter along the way.

While you’re hanging your stockings, drinking heavily, wrapping presents, drinking heavily and…drinking heavily, don’t forget Cousin Eddie’s sage advice:

EMPTY YOUR SHITTER

Like changing the smoke alarm batteries during Daylight Savings Time, Christmas is that time to check the shitters and reset mentally in preparation for a great 2011. If you learn one thing from the many wondrous, thought-provoking discussions we’ve had here at Feet Meet Street this year I hope it is this comment about shit. At the very least, I hope I brought a little profanity to your blog reading this fine winter day.

Merry Christmas To You and the Family!

Happy trails.

P.S. I’ll be back between Christmas and New Year’s for a final C.V. themed post. Stay tuned.