Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

There are many ways to measure a life.

Some people count years.
Some count achievements.
Some count disappointments.
Some count challenges.

I think a more honest method is this:
You count your poops. Because as long as you poop, you are still here. I poop, therefore I am. Still involved in the complicated contract between food, booze, joy, and sorrow.

Poop is the final report. The exit interview. The quiet summary of everything you did wrong – or right – this week. Or yesterday. There is no hiding from it.

Human Poop: The Daily Performance Review

In humans, poop is a form of communication between you and your body. You get a letter every day. Or not. And then you start doubting yourself.

Sometimes it says: “Good job. Balanced diet. Enough water. Reasonable stress.”

Other times it says: “What were you thinking? How could you carry that inside of you?”

Color matters.

Brown is success. Brown means stability.
Brown means: “No worries. Good Job. Carry on.”

Too dark and you start searching the internet at 6 a.m.
Too light and you start planning hospital visits in your head.

Green means you ate a lot of something “very healthy” and now regret it.
Red means stop everything and rethink your life choices. Unless you ate beets. Then it means confusion.

Consistency is even more personal.

There is the Ideal Poop. Textbook. Proud. One piece. Slides politely. Doesn’t clog the toilet.
This is rare.
More often, you get chaos:

• The Emergency Poop (like trying to catch a plane in traffic)
• The Rock-Hard Poop (sorry for breaking the toilet)
• The Suspicious Poop (is this normal or did something die inside me?)

And sometimes, there is no letter.  No message, just silence. And silence is never good news. So you sit there longer. You scroll Instagram. Facebook. Read the news. You wait. You negotiate. You promise to eat better. You promise to worry less. You promise things you already broke before.

Size: The Silent Competition

Nobody talks about size.

Maybe men do, who are obsessed with everything that can be measured and compared: “Mine is bigger. Longer. Better.”
But everyone notices. Especially when you are a guest.

You stare at the bowl and pray:
May the drainage be strong.
May the smell be merciful.
May the porcelain forgive me.

You wonder: “How was that much inside me? I should have weighed myself before.”

This is proof that you are larger on the inside than you thought.

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Dogs: The Philosophers of Poop

Now, dogs.

Dogs have a completely different relationship with poop.

For them, poop is not shameful. It is art. It’s The New York Times, Pup Edition. It is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all social media in one small pile.

Every walk is a discovery tour. They stop. They sniff. They read the newspaper.

“Oh. Max was here. Three hours ago. Chicken diet. Stressed. 
Milo. Greens again. Poor guy. Yuck.”

They know everything.

When a dog poops, there is a ceremony. Like they are performing a necessary ritual. No one knows why. Each dog-poop-reading guru has a different theory. Possibly to align with Earth’s magnetic field. Possibly to confuse predators. Possibly just because.

They spin first. Then they squat. Focused. Serious. Like a small CEO finalizing a deal. Or a president going to war.

And when it’s done, they are proud. They don’t hide it. They look at you like: “Here I am. This is me. Today.”

Dog Poop: A Health Report

Dog poop tells you everything.

Consistency tells us everything.

Firm? Good dog.
Soft? Problem. Raise an eyebrow. Prepare rice.
Liquid? Cancel plans. Cook more rice.

Color matters.

Brown: acceptable citizen.
Yellow: stomach protest. Dead birds or fast food leftovers. Rice.
Green: they ate something illegal. Rice enters the scene, again.

Like humans, dogs never lie with poop. They cannot fake it. They cannot edit it. It is the raw truth.

You learn to read it like a medical chart. You learn to panic quietly. You learn to cook rice at midnight. You learn that love sometimes means staring at shit and feeling afraid.

The Bond: Poop as Love Language

As humans, we clean dog poop. We bend down. We pick it up. We pretend it’s fine. This is love. And responsible dog ownership.

No movie shows this part. You will never see in a script:
“Anita gracefully bends down, scoops the poop, the bag breaks.
The distinguished lady starts cursing like a sailor while trying to clean her hand, her perfectly manicured nails now full of a brown substance.”

No poem mentions the plastic bag. But this is devotion.
“I will carry your waste for you.”

That is commitment.

In exchange, we are closely guarded while pooping. The first door they learn to open is the bathroom door. Even before they learn “sit.” There is no privacy for a dog owner. We guard them. They guard us.

We can poop in peace.
A mutual pact of biological vulnerability.

Aging and Poop

When you are very young, you don’t think about poop.

It happens. Someone cleans you or after you. Your whole life is sleep, eat, poop. Everybody discusses these things constantly, as if their entire life depends on them. Because it does.

You grow up, you move on. You pass that great youth when the last thing on your mind is poop analysis, sleep feels optional, and food is random.

When you get older, though, poop becomes news. You remember it. You analyze it. You report it. Is part of the daily conversation.
“Today was good.” “Today was difficult.” “Today was… strange.”

It becomes a health check. A small daily medical exam. Without doctors. Without bills.
Just you and the toilet.

And then, one day, you become very old. And the circle closes. You don’t think about poop anymore.

It happens. Someone cleans you. Or after you. Your whole life is sleep, eat, poop. Everybody discusses the various states of it, as if their whole life depends on it. Because now, again, it does.

You stop moving on.

Conclusion: Respect the Poop

In a chaotic world of bad news, lost jobs, missed chances, and unfinished dreams, one thing remains reliable: eventually, you will poop.

They say the certainties are death and taxes.
I say: death, taxes, and poop.

Poop is not disgusting. It is honest. It is democratic. Everyone does it: rich, poor, joyful, miserable, confused, successful, lost.

When you poop, it smells the same from you as from a king. Shit is the great equalizer. On a toilet, crowns disappear. A pauper and a millionaire wear the same ugly face of constipation.

Poop levels the playing field. No exceptions.
Dogs understand this. We pretend not to.

But every morning, every walk, every bathroom break, we are reminded:
Food goes in. Food gets processed. Shit comes out.

And as long as that continues, we are still part of the story.

Still here. Still flushing.

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I will stop here this brilliant post about poop as I will never dare to go deeper and touch the subject of flatulence.
That territory belongs to Salvador Dalí. In Diary of a Genius, he approaches farting not as a vulgar accident, but as an aesthetic act – deliberate, theatrical, and profoundly human.

After reading it, I realized something important: I never thought I could get a stomachache from laughing so much about farts. And I say this as a man who needs only one small whiff to lose all dignity and laugh like an idiot for ten minutes.