More Etiquette Lessons With Professor Henry Biller

This week's entry is rushed and poorly edited (by which I mean, not edited at all). You probably won't be able to tell the difference from an average entry.

Rule #3 – Men’s room behavior

In case you lack a penis and the appropriate disguises to infiltrate the men’s room, you ladies may be unaware that there are extremely important guidelines which must be followed at all times and with the precision of a guided missile (Ha! Look - the first double entendre of the column!).

To begin with, when you first enter the men’s room to take a leak, you are faced with the immediate decision of which urinal to choose. If there are three urinals, you must chose one of the end two. That way if another man shows up after you, he won’t have to stand right next to you, as he will be free to use the other end urinal. If a man is already using the middle urinal when you enter the bathroom, you are advised, but not required, to use the stall. If there are two urinals, you are free to choose either one; however, should a man already be using one, it is advised, although not required, that you use the stall. If there is only one urinal and someone is already using it, you must use the stall, because the only other option is to pee on the back of his legs, and this is almost universally considered to be bad form. (I’m sad that I have to describe peeing on someone as “almost” always a bad thing.)

Which segues nicely into our next point: Do not stand in line and wait for a urinal when there are other options open, i.e., another urinal or an empty stall. It’s just creepy.

In those situations where you absolutely must pee standing next to someone (a club or ball game where all urinals and stalls are in constant use), you are to step forward toward the urinal, keep your eyes glued to the spot on the wall in front of you and for the love of all that’s holy, DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE. Hell, you shouldn’t even look at your own junk, let alone strike up a conversation with the guy next to you. This is just a common sense guy rule for all times – do not strike up a conversation with anyone who has a penis in his/her hand. It’s either his own, which leaves the conversation one sided and awkward, or it’s someone else’s, and while I have no personal experience with this, I’m pretty sure it would make for an even more awkward conversation.

The obvious exception being that it is ok to talk to someone who has your penis in his/her hand. You may, however, wish to restrict your comments to talking dirty and avoid discussing last night’s ballgame, etc.

Moving right along….

Should you need to use the stall for its intended purpose of dropping the kids off at the pool, you’re pretty much on your own with whatever freaky weird paranoid routine you have of lining the seat with toilet paper, wiping it down with a portable Lysol wipe you carry in your pocket – whatever it takes to put you in the mood, Skipper. There are only two rules to follow. First, you are required to lock the stall door. It may seem obvious, but too many men just pull the door shut which leaves the chance that another man will just pull the door open, putting him at risk for an accidental penis viewing, which, as we all know, is the easiest way to catch The Gay.

Second, when you are alone in the bathroom, sitting on the hopper and you hear the door open, you are required to rustle some toilet paper, rattle your belt buckle or cough to alert the other man to your presence. Why? So he doesn’t start doing something freaky before he discovers you are there. I don’t even want to get into the number of freaky things he could be doing. If the internet has taught me one only one thing, it’s that my own fairly perverted sexual fantasies look like Amish porn compared to some of the things people desire.

Last, when you are done with your business, wash your hands and get the fuck out. There is no reason to hang around in there – leave that to the ladies. Public men’s rooms are dirty, filthy places where men take their pee-pees out – it’s not a place to discuss a work problem or the latest trend in music. Every minute you spend in there increases the likely-hood that you already have The Gay or you’ll soon contract it.

Next time: The proper way to greet and say good-bye.

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.