Woman Sat on Toilet for 2 Years

Is your workplace buzzing as much as mine is about Pam Babcock, the woman in Kansas who sat on the toilet for two years – so long that her skin actually grew around the toilet? (http://www.topix.net/content/ap/2008/03/boyfriend-woman-lived-in-bathroom) Apparently, the poor woman, who’d been abused in childhood, developed a phobia two years ago about leaving the bathroom. Her boyfriend, Kory McFarren, claims that, at least at first, she moved around the bathroom, showering and changing clothes. He would bring her food, and they would talk and have an otherwise normal relationship – “except it all happened in the bathroom,” The Associated Press article notes. McFarren only called for help when he realized Babcock was acting disoriented. At that point, Babcock had obviously been doing nothing but sitting on the toilet for a long time. “I should have gotten help for her sooner,” McFarren admits in the Associated Press article. “But after a while, you kind of get used to it.”

After reading the article, I suddenly flashed back to a former friend of mine, Ms. Enabler, and her invisible boyfriend. When I moved to South Texas to teach in 1995, Ms. Enabler, who taught in the same middle school that I did, was my assigned mentor. The first time she took me out to lunch, she talked about her boyfriend, whom I’ll call Mr. Invisible – they lived together and had moved to Texas from the Midwest three years earlier. “Is he a teacher, too?” I asked.

She said no, “and he doesn’t speak Spanish, so that makes it really hard for him to get any other job around here.” I can’t remember for sure, but he may not have finished his bachelor’s degree – and he apparently had no interest in doing so, even though there was a college about 45 minutes away he could have attended.

I began making friends with other teachers who had lived in Texas for a while, and one day halfway through the school year, I remarked to J. and C., a couple that I knew, “You know, I’ve never seen Mr. Invisible’s face or heard his voice.”

“Neither have we,” J. and C. said in unison – and they had lived there longer than Ms. Enabler and were good friends of hers! They said the same thing I had noticed, that whenever we called Ms. Enabler, she was the one who answered the phone. She never invited people over, claiming she hated the bad condition her landlord allowed the apartment to be in. Whenever people invited her out, she rarely went – and when she did, she went alone. At that point, I began to wonder if Mr. Invisible truly existed!

A month later, Ms. Enabler finally got off the waiting list for a house in the nice development on the other side of town that was only for teachers. Since J. and C. lived in that development, they offered to help her move, and she gladly accepted. “We’ll finally get to meet Mr. Invisible!” they told me excitedly.

But when they showed up the day of the move, Ms. Enabler let them in and said, “Thank you so much for coming – Mr. Invisible is sick with the flu and won’t be able to help at all.” A couple hours into their work, Ms. Enabler said she’d order a pizza for them all. She went into the bedroom to check on Mr. Invisible and see if he wanted any. J. and C. could hear her voice murmuring, but that was all. They couldn’t help but wonder, “Is she talking to herself in there?” By the end of the day, the move was completed, and J. and C. STILL hadn’t gotten to meet Mr. Invisible.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “If he does exist, what does he do all day while she’s at work?”

“Watches television,” J. said. “She had to call the day they moved to make sure the cable was installed right away so he wouldn’t ‘go crazy without it.’”

“But doesn’t he crave human contact?”

J. smirked. “I guess Ms. Enabler is all the human contact he needs.”

It was just so weird. Other teachers had boyfriends or girlfriends who didn’t work with us, but they were teachers in other schools or they were attending college, and we all hung out together and knew each other – except for Mr. Invisible.

When the school year ended in May, I went home to New Jersey for the summer. One day, J. called me. “I have some bad news,” she said, her voice low. “It’s about Mr. Invisible. He died.”

“He DIED!?” I sputtered. I almost blurted out, “I didn’t really believe he had ever lived!” but thought better of it. “What happened?” I asked.

J. said Ms. Enabler had called her and C. a couple days earlier, crying, saying Mr. Invisible was really sick and not responding, and she had just called an ambulance. J. and C. went over and were absolutely shocked at Mr. Invisible’s condition. He was unconscious, his stomach was distended, and his limbs were skinny and twig-like – and there was no mistaking the smell of alcohol.

When the ambulance crew arrived, they immediately asked if he had AIDS. “Of course not!” Ms. Enabler said, as if it were a totally unreasonable question.

“How much does he drink?” they asked, but J. said Ms. Enabler ignored the question.

“Ma’am, we really need to know. Does he get drunk every day?” they asked again.

“Well, not falling-down drunk!” she snapped.

They got him to the hospital, but it was too late. All they could do was make him as comfortable as possible. 24 hours later, he died of cirrhosis of the liver as a result of alcoholism, at the age of 28.

“The scary thing is, both his family and her family visited from the Midwest earlier this year, on two separate occasions,” J. reminded me. “He didn’t get into such bad shape overnight. He was sick when we helped them move four months ago, remember? So he had to have been pretty ill when they visited. But her dad, her sister, and his parents all saw him like that, and didn’t get him any help. Not to mention Ms. Enabler herself. How much did she spend on alcohol for him over the years? She just let it happen.”

I didn’t know what to say. Everything J. brought up, I was wondering myself.

Love can be defined in a lot of ways. Letting someone hurt themselves on a daily basis isn’t one of them.

But as Kory McFarren said, I guess after a while, you can kind of get used to it.