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Even cats follow the toilet-sitting rules!
"Never, never, sit on a public toilet seat!!!"
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It's vacation season which includes more visits to public toilets.
Oh, the ritual!
The admonishment:
"Never, never, sit on a public toilet seat!!!"
Did your mother ever say that? Bet they did.
Have you ever said that to your kids? Bet your have.
The following has been tucked away in my "possibles" box for several years. I'm sorry I don't know who wrote it as I like to give credit where credit is due.
TOILET SQUATTING: EXERCISE CLASS
My mother was a fanatic about public toilets. As a little girl, she'd bring me in the stall, teach me to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then she'd carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat. Finally she'd instruct, "Never, never sit on a public toilet seat." And then she'd demonstrate "The Stance," which consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your flesh make contact with the toilet seat. But, by this time, I'd have wet down my leg. And we'd go home.
That was a long time ago. Even now in our more mature years, "The Stance" is excruciatingly difficult to maintain especially when one's bladder is very full. When you have to "go" in a public bathroom, you find a line of women that makes you think there's a half-price sale on Mel Gibson's underwear in there. So, you wait and smile politely at all the other ladies, also crossing their legs and smiling politely.
And you finally get closer.
You check for feet under stall doors. Everyone is occupied. Finally, a stall door opens and you dash, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter. You hang your purse on the door hook, yank down your pants and assume "The Stance" as your thighs experience a quake that would register an eight on the Richter scale.
To take your mind off it, you reach for the toilet paper. The toilet paper dispenser is empty. Your thighs shake more. You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on that's in your purse. It would have to do. You crumble it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail.
Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work and your purse whams you in the head. "Occupied!" your scream as you reach out for the door, dropping your tissue in a puddle and falling backward, directly onto the toilet seat.
You get up quickly, but it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with all the germs and life forms on the bare seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that there was any, even if you had enough time to. And your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew, because her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, "You don't know what kind of diseases you could get."
And by this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream, of water akin to a fountain and then it suddenly sucks everything down with such a force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged to China.
At that point, you give up. You're soaked by the splashing water. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket, then. . .
slink out inconspicuously to the sinks.
You can't figure out how to operate the sinks with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past a line of women, still waiting, cross-legged and unable to smile politely at this point.
One kind soul at the very end of the line points out that you are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long as the Mississippi River! You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the woman's hand and say warmly, "Here. You might need this."
At this time, you see your spouse, who has entered, used and exited his bathroom and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting for you.
"What took you so long?" he asks, annoyed. This is when you kick him sharply in the shin and go home.
This is dedicated to all women everywhere who have ever had to deal with a public toilet. And it finally explains to all you men what takes us so long.
