Adventures in Defecation

I could almost hear the cheesy announcer shout, “Welcome to the bathroom show!” as I left the bathroom this Friday. Almost. Let’s rewind.

It was a normal day in the stall, just like any other, when the bathroom show began. In lumbers this guy who at first I thought was one of the cleaning guys, because he was carrying so much stuff. He swung open the stall door next to me and proceeds to have a fight with the metal garbage bin that’s set into the wall. That’s the place where you dump your used paper towels. After a minute or two, I realized that he wasn’t really doing that — he was just extracting something from his bag. A computer? A SMART car? It was big, whatever it was.

Then he flushes the toilet (the good old initial flush), and sits down, peeling off his pants. So I’m doing my soduko and being a good lavatory citizen, hoping I can escape before he breaks out a wall with his enormous flatulation. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but the bathroom show continued. He gets up and then proceeds to take off his shoes. I’m not kidding, and no, he wasn’t changing clothes as far as I could tell, because he got up and sat down several times. And if he was changing clothes, why flush?

By the time I left, he had at last become comfortable. My gosh, I thought, why don’t you start charging admission? At least that way you can make a buck off your bizarre toilet etiquette. The bathroom show went on, I’m sure, but as my business was done, I had to change the channel.