Educator’s arrest as ‘mystery pooper’ raises more questions than it eliminates

Did you see this headline: “Mystery pooper at N.J. high school’s track turned out to be superintendent?” He was caught on camera. This is what keeps me from doing anything illegal, y’all – the threat of security cameras.

Well, not the only thing. I do have a working moral compass. But let’s just say I had the fleeting thought to go trim the bush that blocks the sidewalk where I’m walking the dogs, even though the roots are on private property. Or I get the juvenile urge to toilet paper the home of someone who got high on stupid pills and really ticked me off. That’s when I’d decide I’d better not, because there are probably cameras in the vicinity and police would dedicate themselves to watching hours of tape just to catch their perp.

Apparently this 42-year-old school superintendent (42-year-old school superintendent) had no such fear of security cameras because he obviously got caught. And that’s why I’m writing about him. Well, that, and the fact that it gives me an excuse to use the terms “pooper-intendent” and “pooping Tom” in one story.

Here’s the poop: Dr. Thomas Tramaglini, who is also a lecturer at Rutgers, was charged with lewdness and littering after he allegedly went No. 2 on a local high school track. Feces was discovered on the track for as many as eight days in a row and, in order to catch the serial pooper, police set up surveillance cameras.

What would possess a man, especially the 2013 Outstanding New Jersey Educator, to go potty in public? A vendetta? A fetish? A desire to fertilize the infield? An article on NJ.com suggests it might be the result of something called “runner’s trots,” which come on so suddenly, the runner doesn’t have time to get to a restroom. Or a stand of trees.

Hmmmm. I’ve never suffered from runner’s trots – mainly because the only time I’d run with any amount of speed is if I already had (whisper) gastric distress and needed a toilet in a hurry. So while I can’t say I know what a regular runner would experience when he’s not, well, regular, I can say that if I had been forced to pull down my pants on a public track and “eliminate,” I would have only done it once. Three things would occur if that happened to me: 1. My head would spin like Linda Blair’s so I could see if anyone had witnessed it, 2. I would try to scoop up the offending pile with my shoe (or, if the shoes were expensive, a sock or pile of leaves), and 3. I would never, never, never (never times a gabillion) return to that track again.

So the fact that this guy not only left the excrement there for students to “find” the next day, and did so eight times, says to me he was suffering from more than the accidental poops. Until the mess is straightened out, Tramaglini is on leave and his No. 2 is taking over – I meant the assistant superintendent, y’all. His defense strategy is a closely-held secret but I anxiously await its release. In the meantime, someone needs to market runners’ diapers. Apparently, there’s a need.