AID #68: Urine Appreciation
Did your mom always remind you to flush the toliet? Mine did. After a while, the message stuck, and that’s why I’m such a good citizen of the lavoratory today. Some people never got the message, though. Or maybe the message never stuck. Or maybe they never had a mom. Or something.
Every so often when I’m ready to go, I do the urinal stance, and look down to find…someone else’s urine! Even third graders know that this should not be (after they laugh at it of course). And it is funny — the first 300 times. When time 301 rolls around, then it immediately loses all of its humor.
Why would someone forget to flush? At first I thought that it was drugs — “It’s always the drugs”, but there’s no way where I work has that many druggies. Then I thought that maybe people just had no manners, but that didn’t match extra-bathroom life at work. Maybe the urinals were malfunctioning? After I did my duty, I checked that hypothesis out. Nope. Flush flush. Finally, I hit on it: someone was leaving a gift for those who came afterwards. It was more than a simple present — it was art.
Imagine a perfect half-inch urine bubble ringed by smaller urine bubbles, which were in turn ringed by smaller bubbles yet, until the bubbles became just the post-pee kind of fuzz you see in a urinal. Yes, it was art. It even rose and fell with the change in water pressure. After I got over my initial gross-out, I examined it for a moment, and in deference, used another urinal. I suppose someone will come along and flush or even mingle their urine with the giver’s (yuck), but that’s the price you pay for creating such transient art. If you think about it, it’s like Ray Bradbury’s story “In A Season of Calm Weather”, in its own little way.
