Okay, enough with all the serious shit and on with some serious shit talk.

Nine times out of ten, I really have no problem with using a public restroom, but then there is always that one time…

First off, I realize that handicapped people need a little more room to manuver in the stall, but do they really need a stall that’s 3 times the size of the rest of the bathroom? You know the kind I’m talking about, where when you sit down it feels like you are on the crapper in the middle of a room and not behind a little locked door, where if the lock fails and someone starts to open it you have no chance in hell of being able to push it shut from where you are sitting, so you either wait for them to notice you sitting there, or you hop up and waddle with your pants at your ankles, one-eyed winky waving in the wind, and slam the door shut on their fingers. Sure, you could just yell, “Hey, someone’s in here!” but they don’t always listen.

Continuing with handicapped toilets, why are they so much taller? I’m 5’10” and normally when I sit down on the john my feet fit snugly on the floor, which is a good thing. I personally find that things work themselves out much more smoothly if I can apply a little pressure to the floor, much like driving (try it some time if you don’t drive stick, use your left foot and apply a little pressure to the floor with your heel, you’ll find that your right foot moves more accurately and quickly over the other pedals making driving and stopping just a bit easier). However, in a handicapped stall my heels hover about a half inch over the ground at maximum stretch. No leverage. Most times, if I walk into a bathroom and see that only the handicapped stall remains, I’ll leave. Sometimes though, the “special” stall is the only stall and one has no options.

Beyond those design flaws, most bathrooms are pretty nice. Paper, seat covers, soap, towls, sink, urinal, stalls (with locks on doors). Of course, men’s rooms typically lack the couches and free coffee that some women’s rooms have, but that’s the price we pay for being allowed to pee standing up I suppose.

What really makes most public facilities bad are the other patrons. Some men can’t aim. Or because they don’t want to wash their hands will try to piss “freestyle”. Sometimes this works, other times it works like any other hose. As a kid, we used to unhook the garden hose from the sprinkler then crank up the power from the faucet. It would fling around and spray everywhere and we’d run through it yelling and screaming. Thank god they finally invented that toy that sprayed water around like that, getting hit by the metal flying end fo the hose hurt! But the point is, freestylers tend to piss all over the place. The urinal, the floor, their shoes (don’t they care???), their pants, the divider between the urinals (if there is one). The only saving grace is that they usually don’t piss on the flush handle. Put a freestyler in a stall, however, and all bets are off. This is why most men flush with their foot. Automatic flushers were invented by men for just this reason.

And I won’t even get in to the guys who appearantly either eat whole cows or don’t shit for 2 weeks, and then follow that with 2 rolls of paper. Its not that they don’t flush, its that flushing, as this juncture, becomes moot.

And whatever happened to the shit house poet? I miss the days of amusing myself with the writing on the walls. The phone numbers, the dirty jokes, the crude pictures. Ahh, the good ole days….

Ah well, enough with my ranting…