The little boys (and old ladies) room

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog (and I’m not entirely sure that phrase addresses anyone at all), you know I keep witnessing what I consider to be seriously abnormal activity in bathrooms. I have yet another tale of the toilet.

At the conclusion of yesterday’s weekly round of golden tee with the Board, I went off the bathroom. At this particular pub there are adequate facilities and therefore never usually any wait time, so when I passed through the door into the bathroom I was surprised to be presented with a lineup a few gents deep.

Curious as to what the holdup was all about, I prairie-dogged on tip-toes over the shoulders of my fellow full-bladdered drinkers to have a look at the situation. There was a urinal empty. I automatically assumed the nancy first in line was caught-up with having to pee right beside someone else, and began to by-pass the lineup with a frown, visibly showing my disgust with the excess urinal capacity. However, when I was about to pass the first gent, I noticed his face looking at me bore not the digust of being budded, but carried an expression of curiosity, wondering what the hell I was doing. That’s when I realized what the lineup was for. We were waiting for an elderly woman to finish with one of the urinals and pull up her knickers from around her ankles.

In the first microsecond prior to my realizing the entire scene, I just assumed it was a drunk urinating man who decided to fly his flabby halves, which is somewhat taboo in male urinary culture but not completely unusual. However, I saw half of the face and realized what we were dealing with.

Let me fill out the visual and answer what is undoubtedly your second question: How the hell is a woman using a urinal? Well, I guess theoretically there would be two ways. This old lady did not have the stamina nor the musculature required to hold a position that would “back it in” and make her delivery. Instead, she can only do what I would describe as “The Fonz” slouch (sans thumbs up, of course), where the pelvis is held at an angle sufficient for… well that’s probably enough to explain it.

By the time I had sussed up this whole scene, my bladder was getting the best of me. Being twenty percent of the way to deciding to pee in the urinal beside her, I was relieved of that potentially life-changing experience by a stall door, ajar and advertising it’s vacancy. I ran, turning the lock more for security rather than privacy.

When I came out the miscreant was washing her hands. At this point the line had dissipated and the urinals were once again at full capacity, but this time with customers for which they were designed. New arrivals to the bathroom saw the old lady washing her hands, but went about their business without any visible shock. It’s a funny thing that when a woman enters a men’s bathroom and makes herself at home, nobody minds. In fact in long lineups at concerts, etc, men are often jeering a hardy “Come on in!” to the ladies who are in dire straights and looking to come to the other side. In contrast, if a man enters a woman’s bathroom, I’m pretty sure the result would be anywhere from being called a pervert through to being arrested.

To conclude, while my bathroom experiences are leading to several posts, which is always a good thing, I really fucking hope this kind of thing stops happening to me.