“I want to show you something,” my wife said as she grabbed my hand and literally pulled me into the bathroom. She positioned me so that I was standing right in front of the toilet. “Look,” she said, more than a hint of irritation in her voice and her arms extended toward the toilet.
I looked down at the toilet. It looked just as it always looks. Even the toilet seat and cover were in the down position. I knew my wife was trying to communicate something important to me but I had no idea what it was. “What?” I asked.
“Are you kidding me? Look closely,” she commanded, sounding totally exasperated. I bent down a little closer toward the toilet and peered intently at the porcelain fixture. After a few seconds I straightened up, shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, and put on my very best quizzical expression.
“Omigod!” She was clearly infuriated. “There, on the floor: yellow spots,” she said, pointing to the white tiles directly in front of the toilet. Then, pointing to the area where the top of the toilet base and the tank meet, she growled, “There, behind the toilet seat: yellow spots!
She yanked open a cabinet door beneath the sink, pulled out a sponge, dampened it with water, squeezed it, and handed it to me. “Since you are apparently incapable of peeing into the toilet, the least you can do is clean up those pee drops you leave all around the toilet.” I dutifully swabbed the sponge around the base of the toilet and behind the toilet seat, cleaning up those pesky yellow spots that were virtually invisible to my naked eyes.
Okay, here’s the deal, ladies
The reality is that men and women pee differently. Women pee while sitting down on the toilet seat. It’s a virtual can’t miss situation. And then, when finished, women tidy up by dabbing themselves with a piece of toilet paper to absorb any residual liquid that might still be lingering. Neat, clean, and easy.
Men, on the other hand, pee standing up. That means that there is a distance of at least two feet between, you know, that body part from which the pee emanates, and the rim of the toilet bowl.
The fact that the strength, speed, and arc of the stream all vary significantly during the course of leak-taking requires continuously having to make aiming adjustments throughout the process. It’s like a friggin’ physics lab exam every time we gotta pee.
Then there’s the splash-back problem. Imagine trying to fill a bucket from a garden hose when you’re holding the garden hose two or three feet from the bucket. Guess what? Some water is going to splash out of the bucket onto the ground. It’s unavoidable.
Then there are those occasions, thankfully rare, when we experience the dreaded split stream. When that happens, all bets are off. Aim left? Aim right? Doesn’t matter. The only way to deal with split stream is to use a funnel!
And by the way, men don’t use toilet paper to sop up residual pee at the end of the process. Oh no. We have to shake and jiggle our “thing” to make sure every last drop has been expelled. After all, we don’t want any drops to dribble out after we stuff ourselves back into our pants.
Go, once again, to that garden hose analogy. Just try shaking and jiggling the hose, even while standing right over the bucket, and not have any drops of water miss the bucket entirely. Impossible.
So don’t pull a Lady Macbeth on your husbands, boyfriends, fathers, sons, and uncles. Don’t obsess about those damn [yellow] spots you may happen to find on or around the toilet. Seriously, given the challenging physics of peeing that we men have to deal with, we’re doing the best we can.
All I ask is that you clean up after yourself!
Posted by: Sandy | 10/28/2011 at 05:41 PM
Oh, and in the event of an earthquake, please sit and pee or refrain from peeing until it is over.
Posted by: Sandy | 10/28/2011 at 05:51 PM
In the event of a MAJOR earthquake, I will likely just bend over and kiss my ass goodbye! I suppose that might be easier from a seated position. :-)
Posted by: Doobster | 10/28/2011 at 09:11 PM