You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Men’s room.
When did men turn into farm animals?
I had this befuddled thought the other day while entering a truck stop restroom off the interstate.
“Howyall doing?” the toothless woman behind the counter said.
I wondered if those were gaps in her teeth or plugs of chewing tobacco.
“ah, where are the restrooms mam?”
“Back yonder,” she says with all the intelligence of a Honey Boo Boo reject.
I push the door open and my mouth drops.
The light is flickering. The floors covered with a layer of brown water. Is it mud? Is it?
The walls are covered with marker. For a good time call Tiny.
I laugh out loud.
“You going in?” my bladder yells to me.
“Shut up Bladder. This is none of your affair.”
I let the door shut.
The toothless witch at the counter eye balls me like I’m a piece of beef jerkey with money.
“What’s wrong honey bunch?”
“I didn’t realize you were cock fighting back there.”
“huh?”
And with that I push the door open. My swollen bladder and myself off in search of another possibility.
As I eyeball the back of the service station; I think to myself.
How bad does it have to be before a guy will not go into a restroom.
And that’s when it strikes me:
When it comes to bathrooms, men are 2nd class citizens. Because we stand to pee, we are discriminated against.
Men are the equivalent of cows standing in a field, in front of all the other cows, forced to raise our tails, and stare off into space as we conduct our business.
Have you been to a men’s room lately?
It’s a porcelain petri dish of human excrement clinging to floors and toilet seats, dripping from walls.
I have been to a million bathrooms in my life. The common denominator? A single light bulb hanging over a broken mirror. The filth makes you question whether you needed a passport to enter this third world debacle.
I’ve been to wash rooms where I wondered if Big Foot had been in the facility before me.
I’ve walked into places and thought “Didn’t I see this hell hole on the cover of Tia Juana jail Illustrated?”
Then I felt guilty.
I wondered if men’s restrooms look like a crime scene because men are basically disgusting.
Do we just make a mess because we are lazy and dirty and don’t care?
Is that God’s master plan?
Or does environment dictate behavior?
Do men sprinkle and spray on occasion because the restrooms we frequent are all ready so foul that missing the mark is really not an issue?
It’s like throwing a soda can into a landfill. Did you really litter?
And if you are a man, you are lucky if you even get a urinal with a partition.
A urinal with a partition. That’s like both kinds of music, “country and western.”
Then it’s just a matter of other guys forgetting to flush and cigarette butts and other unmentionables left behind.
What’s wrong with guys?
Did your momma raise you in a barn?
You see? It’s that barn yard analogy again.
A partition affords a man a bit of privacy and often provides for some good reading.
But if you have rolled snake eyes and your luck has gone the way of Herman Cain at a NOW meeting, then I give you the metallic trough.
The trough is the ultimate insult of the sexes.
Women get perfume and pink and puffy clouds.
Men? we get dirty contaminated 3rd world stench.
We are farm animals with opposable thumbs.
Because of our external plumbing, we can stand in line, at attention, and release the urinary hounds.
The trough is an effective way to eliminate a large amount of body waste simultaneously, in a communal setting.
While efficient, it is hardly civilized.
What’s it like? It’s crazy weird.
Men try and act like it’s normal, but really, is it?
You stand shoulder to shoulder with a stranger. Your fly is open. His fly is open. It’s men staring into a dark cinder block wall of oblivion. Behind you lurks a horde of men chortling and making barnyard sounds. Below you, a constant flowing river swirling into a collective drain.
Why are men still forced to go like farm animals that end up in your frying pan on Sunday mornings?
I hear ya men. Wouldn’t it be fair if we had a nicely lit, clean smelling, dry place to go.
Ponder that my man friends, ponder that. A restroom that was less truck stop, less 3rd world nation, and more, well like mom’s house.
How about some po pourri? How about a soft towel to wipe my hands after.
But instead, we are men: For men it’s nothing but the slime on the bottom of your shoe. For men it’s Tia Juana truck stops, third world pumping stations, dirty, smelly, unsanitary bastions of unbelievable filth.
Men were born with out-door plumbing and because of that we will always use facilities designed for cave men, cleansed by farm animals, and inspected by petri dish chugging swamp creatures.
Hang in there guys.
Life’s Crazy™