Public Bathroom Hijinx!!!

Not of the George Michael variety, that's a whole other blog.

This is probably going to be just for the guys, since I don't normally go into the women's room. Maybe the womens will appreciate it, but I'm thinking not. I usually get the frowny face when I start talking about bathroom stuff, which is often. But I digress.

Have you noticed that you never see floor length urinals anymore? Have you EVER seen them? The last floor length urinals I used regularly were in my elementary school, and here's why you probably don't see them anymore: they are very easy to stop up and flood the bathroom. And yes, I speak from personal experience. When I was in 1st grade my friend Mike and I were in the bathroom, and it seemed to be a good idea to fill the urinals with toilet paper and flush them numerous times. This was in the 70s, so there wasn't any crap about conserving water, so there was a lot of it all over the floor quickly. I guess we brought wet footprints into the class because we got busted, but instead of giving us detention, they made us apologize to Mr. Hermanns, who was the custodian that had to clean it up. I felt terrible after that, which I guess was the point, and I never did it again. (As a side note, I later found out that Mr. Hermanns was a twice or thrice decorated WW II veteran. And now that I think about it, there were other custodians in the middle school and high school who were also veterans from Korea and Viet Nam. Maybe they were isolated incidents, but it doesn't seem fair.)

Remember the classic hand dryer instructions?

1)Push button.

2)Rub hands gently under warm air.

Did you ever see a dryer that actually had this printed on it? Maybe if you were installing the dryer, but if not, you probably did not see those words. What you actually saw was words and letters scratched out, so it read

1)Push butt.

2)Rub hands gently under arm.

It was the same on every single dryer that you used in any bathroom that had a hand dryer in it. Maybe this even spread to the women's room at some point, but I don't know. I wonder if the company that made them gave up after awhile and scratched the letters out themselves, just like Wheel of Fortune gives you the R S T L N and E for the last puzzle, since those were the only letters that anyone ever picked. But now they have circumvented this problem by having pictures instead of writing. There's the pressing the button picture, the rubbing the hands under the warm air picture, and then the picture I can only describe as peeking inside the dryer and getting acid thrown in your eyes. What does that one mean? Can you actually pull down the dryer thing and dry your eyeballs out? I haven't found one yet where you could do this.

One ineluctable (I had to look that up) part of the men's bathroom is the graffiti. There are web sites and blogs devoted to this, but I want to mention something you don't always see, which is corrected graffiti. If you're a Mad Magazine fan from way back, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, there's a public bathroom that I go into quite often which apparently is also frequented by a member of the KKK, since it has been carved into the stall twice. Some very nice person (probably not in the KKK) has disguised both of these carvings. The first one now says "CHICKKKENS," which is kind of odd because you don't see a lot of chickens using the public restroom. The other one now says "BOOKKEEPER," which is much more clever, because there definitely could have been a bookkeeper using this particular stall, and the KKK is just a little more hidden than in the previous example. This kind soul may also have been the one who carved "PLEASE DO NOT WRITE ON THIS WALL." He said please, right? We must listen to a man that says please.

Finally, a word of advice to manufacturers of public bathroom products that have their company name emblazoned on said products: if your company name has the word "ass" contained in it somehow, PLEASE consider changing the name of your company. Seriously, you're just asking for trouble. I have been in a bathroom where they have the tissue paper rings for the toilet (and really, what a waste of an invention) in a plastic dispenser, with the words "REST ASSURED" written across it. They are raised letters in the plastic, but someone will see it and bring some sandpaper with them next time, and perhaps make it say "REST ASS HERE." I know someone will do this because I have already thought of it. It may take awhile though, because the dispenser was put in upside down. Maybe to discourage the inevitable defacing.