To Pee Or Not To Pee

Currently, when I am finished using the toilet in the Bradbury household, I leave the toilet seat and cover in the down position as a routine course of action. After considering the reasons why I do this, I have come up with only one motive: Fear. I’m afraid that if I leave the toilet seat up one more time, my wife will make good on her promise to shoot me in the face with a rocket launcher. Today, however, I began to examine her argument for leaving the seat down, and I can only conclude that her case is illogical.
To begin with, I use the bathroom more often than my wife. I drink more coffee and water than the average person, so I spend more time standing in front of the toilet; whereas, my wife hardly uses the bathroom. As far as I can tell, the only time she needs a restroom is when we are driving in the car and we have just passed the last exit for another 45 miles. I’m not sure if this is a biological oddity or just part of a larger plot to drive me insane, but either way, I end up using the home bathroom much more often, so it stands to reason that my preference should get more consideration.
My preference in this situation, it turns out, carries the same weight as a Gore voter in Florida. My wife’s “preference” or “command,” as I like to describe it, is to keep the seat down at all times when the toilet is not in use. The first reason she gives is that when she uses the bathroom at night, she likes to leave the light off, which means she runs the risk of accidentally sitting on the bowl rim if the seat is left up. Now, I can agree that sitting on the rim of the bowl would be a disgusting and possibly traumatizing experience. However, I would argue that if a person needs to sit down every time she uses the toilet, it would make sense to develop a habit of checking to see if the seat is down. It seems like a quick flick of the wrist and - bam! - the toilet seat is down or she finds out it is already down. Obviously, my wife is displaying signs of mental illness every time she just sits without looking.
Speaking of crazy, her secondary argument for leaving the seat down is just as bad. Her back-up position is that it is more sanitary to leave the seat and lid down. This is so crazy it forces me to consider calling the men in white jackets to take her away for a 24 hour stay in the hospital to make sure she isn’t a danger to herself or the public. As my first piece of evidence that this is flawed logic, I would like to point out that she doesn’t complain when only the seat is left down and the lid is up. If it were truly unsanitary to leave the seat up, surely it must be equally unsanitary to leave just the lid up. I’m not a microbiologist, and I don’t have a Ph.D. from Harvard in communicable diseases, but I’m pretty sure that any germs that decide to make a run for freedom out of the toilet bowl are not going to be deterred by just the toilet seat. Along those same lines, I don’t really see how keeping the lid down will prevent any germs from escaping, either. In case it is not clear to anyone but me, there is a big gap between the toilet seat and the bowl rim, and again, I’ve never studied germs in any in-depth way, but I’m pretty sure almost every germ in the world is small enough to fit through that crack. That crack is only slightly smaller than the crack in my wife’s final argument.
Her last stance is that the toilet just looks better with the seat and lid down – this is the way it is designed, she says. Again, crazy talk. Not only am I not a microbiologist, I’m not an interior designer, either, but even I can tell that a toilet is an ugly, ugly appliance and there is no way to make it look better. Face it – our toilet is a large chunk of white porcelain with a plastic lid and seat. The best that can be done with it is to keep it clean. Beyond that there is no way to make it look “better.” Leaving the lid down as a beautification project is like hanging a pair of fuzzy dice off the mirror of your rusted out 1986 Oldsmobile. The improvement effects are so minimal as to be considered inconsequential. And inconsequential effects should not carry weight in this arguement.
A problem which should get consideration was actually brought up by someone other than my wife. A friend of mine suggested that a reason to keep the lid down is to prevent things that have been dropped in the bathroom from going into the toilet. Now, I said this problem should get consideration, and as I considered it. Then I came up with a solution: Stop doing things over the toilet which puts you in jeopardy of dropping items in the bowl. What are people doing, putting together model airplanes standing over the toilet? The only possible thing I can think of is that people may be dropping toothbrushes in there, but that’s just weird. Don’t brush your teeth over the toilet. Try standing by the sink.
In the end, I believe that my leaving the toilet seat down is an action that I can continue to take, however, not because it makes sense, but because that’s what my wife likes and I’m a nice guy. But in order for me to “remember” to continue leaving the seat down, I think a concession must be made. And that concession is for my wife to start leaving the seat back when she gets out of the car. That is an argument with a logical basis.