Professor Poop and Yoko No No

When I turned fifty I went for a physical and my doctor told me that everyone should have a colonoscopy by their fiftieth birthday. A colonoscopy is an endoscopic examination of the large bowel and the distal part of the small bowel with a camera on a flexible tube passed through the anus.

“You won’t feel a thing,” she says. “You’ll be in twilight sleep.” “No thanks,” I said.

She says I meet the criteria for a “less-invasive” option where I send a stool sample to a lab. Pretty gross. I opt in. Once home I place my sample in a pre-addressed postage-paid package and drive to the closest Fed Ex store. I wait in line with my packaged poop under my arm.  I see Lance, my current Creative Writing student who had recently brilliantly contributed to my class discussion about “Breaking the Fourth Wall.” Just days before.  Lance will be obligated to weigh, confirm correct prepaid postage for, and mail his professor’s poop. So, I pretend that I’ve forgotten an item in my car, and escape. I drive to the next nearest Fed Ex a few miles away and mail my poop fairly anonymously.

In the parking lot as I’m leaving, I see a local unhoused woman who’s been around for decades. She moves quietly, methodically examining ashtrays & sidewalks searching for discarded cigarette butts to smoke. I’m not sure how old she is or from where. I think she’s of Asian descent. People refer to her as “Yoko No No,” not TO her, just about her.

 It sounds really bad now to say it out loud. But it’s true. I did it too. I called her “Yoko No No.”

 I give her a few dollars. She mumbles “thank you” and continues inspecting discarded cigarette butts, lighting then puffing them. It’s freezing out. Back at home, I worry that someone will assault her in her sleep, but I realize that, I’ve never actually seen her asleep. I make hot tea and put it in a thermos, I grab sleeping bags and blankets. I drive back to the parking lot and she’s gone. I  find her a few blocks away. I park and walk over to her. She looks me in the eyes. Her hands and face are leathery from the sun and cold. “It’s going to be cold,” I say. She accepts the stuff.

The next day driving by with a macabre rubberneck impulse, I see blankets, thermos, and sleeping bag on a bench outside of the Fed Ex store. She’s vanished again. My heart stops. I see her later in the sun near a bus stop rummaging through a trash can. I needn’t have worried. She’s always more or less fine.

 A few days later, I receive the results of my mailed poop. The test came out normal and, honestly, I’m not surprised. I’m always more or less fine. Except for heartburn.Chronic heartburn. Like every day. I’ve had it as long as I can remember. A few years later, suddenly this thing that I’ve basically had forever that no one said anything about, turned into a thing that everyone said could be a really big deal, I mean, everyone’s telling me stories of people, like one friend of a friend who was fine a month ago and started complaining of daily heartburn. -- discovers that she has esophageal cancer and dies. I researched and everything… I mean this is a real thing.

Well, I never think that something like that is going to happen to me, But now I’m convinced that is definitely going to happen to me. Also, it occurs to me that eventually, something gets everyone eventually, right? It’s not like I just have chronic heartburn till I’m 300 or something. My intense research on esophageal cancer reveals, “At stage zero… five years to live.” Stage zero?  What? So Instead of my usual assumption that everything is more or less fine, I go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum (no pun intended) and become pretty sure that this was the thing that was going to take me out.

I go to my doctor who recommends an endoscopy that, “since we’re in there anyway,” I have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy at the same time. I think she means that the two scopes are literally “inserted at the same time” in each end, simultaneously. I wonder if you can die from the procedure. That would be pretty funny. What would they tell my students? Even the hardest hit of all loved ones couldn’t deliver that eulogy with a straight face.…”She always lived her life with a candle burning from both ends…whoops.”

The day of my appointment. Convinced of my imminent death, I realize Wow. There were a lotta things I kinda meant to do more of that I thought I had years more to do, contribute more to my community, society, be a better human being and, of course, there’s world peace, So, I hightailed it to be a better human being at that point. Since I didn’t know yet for sure that I was terminally ill, but I was pretty sure that was going to be the result of the procedure, mundane daily tasks suddenly had philosophical significance, “The next time I teach a class, I’ll know that I have a terminal illness, the next time I have a coffee, crack an egg, pay my electric bill, everything will be framed in the knowledge that I have just months to live. I mean, I won’t be able to unknow it once I know it.

I arrive at the doctor’s office for the procedure, I’m about to go in when I see Yoko No No walking way down the sidewalk with her back to me… I run down the sidewalk- I catch up to her but have no way of calling her. “Hey!” I yell. She stops and wearily turns toward me, “I thought you might need this,” I say, and hand her a few bucks.

 “Yeah. Thank you.” She says.

“What’s your name?” I stammer.

 “Yun Sun,” She says.

“Thank you,” I say, not sure what I was saying thank you for.

 I repeat her name over and over as I walk back to the outpatient surgery entrance. “Yun Sun, Yun Sun”… I add her to the  contacts in my phone under “y.” I open the door to the outpatient surgery center and turn to watch Yun Sun, now way down the street, stop at a trash can, pick up a discarded cigarette butt, light it, take a puff, toss it, and keep going.