Public restroom indignities
Thursday, October 12, 2006, 7:00 PM

I’m in a public restroom stall, trying to get the safety pin holding my pants together off because the zipper finally broke and I’m not ready to retire the pants yet. Or buy a new zipper. My gut is pushing out a wee bit too far, which makes the unpinning of the pin somewhat of an adventure.

All of a sudden I’m slammed with a smell, an oh-gag-me, oh-kill-me-now stench of diarrhea times twenty. The person in the stall beside me has just got started. The sounds are awful, but the smell is awfuller, and I still haven’t gotten my damn safety pin undone.

Stupid fat gut!

Stupid vanity that makes me wear a pair of pants that need to be safety pinned!

I’m finally successful n getting the pin loose, and sink down onto the tissue papered toilet seat with a strangled sigh. I concentrate on breathing shallowly with my hand over my mouth. I'm peeing out a fourth of the Mississippi River because I’ve been drinking lots of water lately.

And I wonder why people don’t poop the way I do. I’m seriously considering a campaign.

1. If you know you’re going to have to, create a seal across the toilet lid with your butt cheeks and thighs. No cracks. (Pun intended.) Let no air escape.

2. As soon as you drop one, flush the toilet. If you’ve got another coming, fine. Flush anyway and keep the seal intact. You don’t want to smell it, do you? Your stall mate sure as shit doesn’t. (Pun intended.)

3. Wipe quickly, then press your legs together tightly and reassume the seal while you go for more toilet paper. After more than three wipes, flush again -- fumes have escaped during your leg parting wipes. Flush baby, flush. There is no shame in flushing.

I’m still peeing when my stink bomb-dropping stall mate bursts out of the stall, ignoring the sink on the way out. I imagine chasing after her to demand that she wash her hands before she poisons anyone, the gross-sick-pig-hog-sow-cow. I’d at least have liked to see who she was so I'd know to give her a twenty-foot berth from now on, so I can give her the Miss Manners Look of Distaste.

And then I’m hit by the thought that anyone entering the restroom will think that I’m the one who’s filled the restroom with unholy funk, and I’m pissed. (Hah! Another pun!) I’m cursed and trapped for the short long run because I have pants I have to safety pin back on, plus a wrap-around skirt that I have to re-adjust. Mother Nature and Murphy of Murphy's Law must be busting a gut. Me? Not so much.

Someone else does come into the restroom. I cringe in my stall while I fight with the safety pin, and I want to say I only peed, I didn’t do the funk. The lady in the next stall snappily undoes her pants (kaboom, zip), falls heavily onto the john (with an attitude of distaste), jerks off the toilet paper (lo, impatience), and gets the hell out of the dodge, all the in space of 75 seconds or less. As I flush the toilet, she’s doing the fast chug-chug-chug on the paper towel dispenser. She’s no more than the sound of the closing door when I take my place at the sinks.

Bodily functions and bodily expunging is normal. I get that. It doesn't mean I'll excuse you for being a Neanderthal about it, though.

Courtesy flush, ya'll. Learn it, know it, practice it.

A flush in the middle of the toilet-sitting process in order to reduce the aroma...usually performed on a "foreign throne" as a courtesy to the owner of said throne... in other words, to be polite and not stink up the host's crapper too much.

4 Did the Unhingey Jiggy Engage in Unhingenosity
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