Zachary Grant BessFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-12-2017

Place item was collected

Personal Home 4th North. Logan, Utah

Informant

Spencer McCall

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Spencer McCall grew up in Northern California (Wilton), and is a NorCal country boy, who has worked manual labor for some time. Grew up Mormon, but does not consider himself active. He’s nineteen, attending USU as a student studying business. He is my roommate, friend, and is a brother in my Fraternity: Alpha Sigma Phi. He attends school two days a week and works three days a week doing construction to pay for school. Well versed in construction, he has his own truck and tool set, and can do about anything with his hands.

Context

My roommates and I were on my bed, talking about a gamut of subjects, including our love lives and other funny things about people we know. We are all in the same fraternity, so while we all have different lives and are involved in very different things around the community, we have enough mutual friends and stories to keep us going. This night I was on my bed leaned against the wall, trying to work on homework when Spencer came in wanting to have a “Porch Boys” talk. Which somehow recently became code for needing help with your love life but also talking to just to talk (as one does on a porch.) It should be noted, while we have a porch, these discussions have never actually taken place on said porch. In the midst of us telling stories, I turned my recorder on, knowing what story Spencer was about to tell, getting his consent earlier that week to record him for this project. Spencer asked all of us this question, as I’ve heard him ask other’s as well “When was the last time you shit your pants.” Not entirely his idea this conversation has come up before in the fraternity, and I’d had this conversation years ago with some guys I worked with landscaping. The premise is, the situation is so embarrassing that you can’t forget, and probably of greater import, that the last time you did it was likely not that long ago. Given the raunchy nature of the topic, these stories are usually told in a similar context to that which I was recording it in, when guys are hanging out swapping inappropriate stories (this doesn’t preclude women, if they are familiar enough with the group.) Obviously not a conversation to have in any professional setting, usually had amongst friends, siblings, or in blue collar work environments.

Text

*Introducing it*

Spencer: “want to get a reaction out of people?”

“When’s the last time you sharted yourself?”

*laughing*

“It’s funny because everyone knows the last time they sharted themselves”

Myself: “I honestly don’t know that I do”

Other Roommate “aw, yeah you do man, yeah you do”

Spencer: “Yeah I can tell you mine vividly”

“I was working in a fucking flip house, kay, back in California. It was a beat up old ass house I was working in to restore it” *answering interjections* “So I was working in that shit all by myself doing demo, okay? I was fucking ripping out like sheetrock and bullshit like that. And then… Like I’m there all by myself, and I’m like ‘my stomach hurts’ *giggling trying to talk* “there was like no bathrooms in that place cause they were all just freakin’… We tore ‘em all out already. ‘N so I’m just like ‘Damn my stomach hurts a lot now’ like after twenty minutes I’m just like ‘okay this is uncomfortable.’ BUT THEN I’m like ‘okay, I gotta go!’ So I start driving to the nearest McDonald’s, okay, and I’m like halfway there, and...” *holding back laughs* “It’s bad, it, it all just let’s lose bro, so I like waddle my ass into this McDonald’s, and freakin’ try and clean out my shorts” *laughing stops it for some 10 seconds* “and then I just finish my day, just like stained, and it’s just like, it’s a McDonald’s, so they got that like one-ply freaking toilet paper, that you can’t clean shit up with, it just –Smears- “

Myself: “So did you like, throw your underwear away or…?”

Spencer: “No so I’m like trying to clean off my underwear”

*roommate gagging, dry heaving, trying not to laugh* Roommate: “So you just free-balled it…?”

Spencer: I was at… So then I go to work, and I like work for another couple hours in freaking shitty ass underwear, and then I like go home”

*interjecting* Roommate: “HOW DID NOBODY like ‘like what is that smell?!”

Spencer: “WELL, like I was, working by myself, so It didn’t really matter. I’m pretty sure I was in like Stockton too, so it was like, it was like a forty-minute drive home”

…

“But anyways it was like bad bro”

Texture

As reflected in the text, it was hard to even get through the whole story as we were all laughing so bad. The story was told in humor, even though Spencer was obviously somewhat embarrassed, he fully volunteered the story, and told it with great detail, you could tell he’s asked the question before as well as told that story. It was told at a loud volume, even though it was probably told around 1:00AM and we shouldn’t have been loud. Spencer told the whole thing in a way to somewhat draw sympathy, explaining how hard of a spot he was in for this to have happened, but also recognizing the humor of it all in retrospection. It was told in the same way most people would to embellish the story but I doubt anything in the story was less than true.

Course

Introduction to Folklore/English 2210

Instructor

Lynee McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G7: Sickness

EAD Number

3.13.14

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