Did you ever stop to wonder how much bodily waste you produce in a lifetime? I did. And, it turns out, I produce a lot. I'll bet you do, too.

Just think about poop for a second (yes, I know "poop" is an infantile term but think about the person who's writing this, as well as the reasons for doing so.). Anyway, poop. How many times to you poop in a year? I go about once a day, on average. I don't know how close this comes to a standard sampling of mostly healthy Americans, since the people that I've polled look at me really funny and back away quickly. Anyway, say I miss a few days here and there and go twice in a day here and there. I'm gonna guess it averages out to about 300 times per year. Also because 300 is a nice round number, as opposed to 283.

So we have porcelain contemplation about 300 times. Let's think about a lifetime. I'm 37 years old. I know that when I was a baby I was a pooping machine. I probably skewed the number per year right out the window from 0 - 2, and then got into a sort of toddler/youth routine. I won't hazard a guess as to frequency, though. So we'll say that I started my (approximately) 300 times per year pooping routine at about age 18. So I've been "in the habit" for 19 years now, so far. I'd hope that I'll maintain my regularity for quite a long time more but, just for the sake of convenience, we'll say 40 years, until 58. After that, it'll be Metamucil and oat bran time for me. 40 years, 300 times per year. 12,000 times. That's a lot of contemplation. As a side note, even with a minimal stay of five minutes, that's 1,000 hours on the pot!!

Now we have to figure out weight. Very difficult, as it's always so variable. But I got a precious few guesses ranging from one half to one full pound per. So we'll split the difference and say 12 ounces or three-quarters of a pound. When we grind that through the calculator, we arrive at a figure of 9,000 pounds of poop in 40 years. 4.5 tons. Amazing when you think about it, eh?

There's also the pee. But I can't even get into that one right now. Plus, pee is way more variable than poop. There's also the toilet paper. There's a lot of that going through the sewers, too. The ancient Romans used to use a sponge. Middle eastern peoples used their left hand (which helps to propogate the stigma of leftys).

But 4.5 tons of poop in 40 years. I can only imagine the totals if I live to 80.

And people laughed at me when I said I was gonna start writing in a blog.