Oregon Trail Jabbers

            I have had three experiences with the Oregon Trail.

            The first one was The Oregon Trail, the best educational video game ever created.  Tragically, my schools, in their hubris, turned up their noses at the game from 1971.  Instead, they made us play Type-To-Learn, and also learn things from books and people actively engaging with us instead of playing video games.  I first played the game during high school, sick of hearing about it from forums and kids with superior educations than my own.  The game knocked me dead.

            Oregon Trail knocked me dead in several ways.  It made me vomit myself into dehydration with cholera.  It drowned me when the four-foot deep river proved too treacherous to ford.  It broke my arm and broke my leg and killed me with the subsequent fever.  It made me shit myself to death with dysentery.  When it wasn’t killing me over and over again, Oregon Trail tested my faith in other ways.  Parts would break with little rhyme or reason, sometimes within seconds of each other.  I could kill hundreds of bison but only bring back six pounds of food.  The constant cycle of death and suffering was interrupted with blaring bit-crunched music and recreations of various landmarks, like Two-Color Springs, and Browny Brown Browns.  And I loved it.  That game taught me how to shoot in eight directions, how you must never, ever do anything any later than March, and that no matter what you do you will inevitably poop yourself to death in Idaho.  All Type-To-Learn ever taught me was how to type.  And that certainly didn’t help me in my second experience with the Oregon Trail.

            Me, my little brother, and my dad were packed into a car, racing to make it back to California after a Christmastime trip to Lopez Island, Washington.  I don’t want to suggest that we’re badasses, but my Dad frequently made the entire 940 mile drive in one day, which meant my brother and I would sit in the car and play video games for hours at a time.  Sometimes, we even managed to sleep.  But even the most hardened cool guys need a break from sitting in a car and doing nothing, especially when you have to pee.  So we stopped at a truck stop in rural Oregon, intrigued by the sign advertising that it was “part of the historic Oregon Trail.”  The snack-food store itself certainly looked the part; it was wooden, shabby (but in a nice way,) and the very nice cashier was approximately eight feet tall with a Santa beard.  But the bathrooms offered a degree of authenticity none of us were prepared for.

            When my brother left the bathroom, he looked shaken and pale.  “Don’t sit down,” he muttered, staggering back to the car.  It was as though he had found a dead body in the bathroom, which after entering it, I realized I would have preferred.

            There may have been a dead body in the bathroom at one point, based on the invasive stench, but if so it had decayed long ago.  More concerning was the state of the urinal.  A sign informed me it was out of order, but typically when such is the case, you only see some tape around the urinal to discourage use.  Perhaps a plastic bag, if you’re desperate.  This urinal was boarded up with a sheet of thin wood.  Based on the damp, smelly appearance of the wood and the disgusting puddle near the base of the toilet, that hadn’t stopped people from trying.  I remember thinking to myself, what the hell is WRONG with people? Why would they just pee on a board? 

But then I opened the lone stall, and I instantly understood.

The word “encrusted” is thrown around quite a bit in today’s world.  Food “encrusted” in cheese.  Golden watches “encrusted” in jewels.  Looking back, I realize just what a lie those descriptions really are.  I never knew what “encrusted” truly meant until that moment in the bathroom stall, as I stared in horror at the toilet seat below me.  I don’t want to be crass, as I know that kids regularly read this blog, so I’ll just say that it was covered in a thick, crusty layer of something brown, hard, and smelly, and it was shit.  It was definitely shit.  The toilet seat was covered in shit.  People had defecated on the toilet seat despite the presence of a working toilet, done nothing, and left, and now there was a crust of shit.  Probably multiple people had come in and seen the poop layer slowly building, and just decided to poop on top of the poop.

I followed my brother’s advice and did not sit down (fortunately, this was very simple, as I only needed to pee.)  But even this felt unsanitary and disturbing.  I felt in danger of catching dysentery and adding another layer to the seat just by being in the stall.  I swear I could feel poop-germs swimming up my pee-stream, cackling and yelling, “bet you wish you’d peed on that board now! YOU’RE GOING TO DIE IN HERE!” Somehow, I made it out alive, less shaken than my brother but still visibly disturbed enough for my Dad to know that something had happened in the bathroom when he saw me step outside.  A few minutes later he emerged, a look of despair and understanding on his face.  We left, exclaiming and ranting about what we had experienced, but hollow inside.  We were part of the problem.  Instead of doing the right thing—burning the bathroom down and arguing our case in court—we did the easy thing.  The cycle continues to this day.

The third experience I’ve had with the Oregon Trail happened yesterday.

Horrified by the traffic on the way to Portland, my mom and I took a detour into Oregon City to kill some time until rush hour ended.  We wound up at the end of the Oregon Trail, a grassy field with several buildings, bordered by three massive metal sculptures in the shapes of covered wagons.  Technically, this is the most “real” experience with the Oregon Trail I’ve ever had.  We briefly listened to the concert playing on the field, we put on funny hats and solved puzzles in the gift shop, and we took photos of me pretending to shit myself to death in front of the sign in front of the place.  Typical tourist stuff.

But bizarrely, the experience didn’t feel as authentically “Oregon Trail” to me despite literally being a significant point on the Oregon Trail.  The music on the grass was a Beatles cover band, and wasn’t 8-bit.  It wasn’t even 16-bit.  It was probably 32-bit or something; it sounded really nice and clear.  I pretended to be pooping, and horrorstruck by my bowels, but knowing what true horror at poop was first-hand, I was fully aware of the hollowness of the pantomime.   The gift shop was pleasant, air-conditioned, and not covered in feces.  Everything was wrong.  To me, the Oregon Trail had become an idea, and that idea resonates with me far more than the actual thing that really is the Oregon Trail.  I completely recognize that this is dumb of me, but I can’t help it.  All I can do is pray whatever germ or parasite I inhaled in that restroom remains dormant for just a little longer, and doesn’t activate and make me too weak or sick to do anything.  Writing this has me jonesing for another trip down the trail, and it would be a shame if I pooped myself to death in real life before I could do so in a video game.