Humour - Text Based
The Stance
Courtesy of TabooKitty,
a good friend of mine from Yahoo! Pool.
My mother was a fanatic about public toilets. As
a little girl, she'd bring me in the stall, teach me to wad up
toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then, she'd carefully lay strips
of toilet paper to cover the seat. Finally, she'd instruct, "Never,
never sit on a public toilet seat." And she'd demonstrate
"The Stance," which consisted of balancing over the
toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your
flesh make contact with the toilet seat. But by this time, I'd
have peed down my leg. And we'd go home.
That was a long time ago. I've had lots of experience with public
toilets since then, but I'm still not particularly fond of public
toilets, especially those with powerful, red-eye sensors. Those
toilets know when you want them to flush. They are psychic toilets.
But I always confuse their psychic ability by following my mother's
advice and assuming The Stance. The Stance is excruciatingly difficult
to maintain when one's bladder is especially full.
This is most likely to occur after watching a full-length feature
film. You know what I mean. You drink a two litre cup of Diet
Coke, then sit still through a three-hour saga because, for heaven's
sake, even if you didn't wipe or wash your hands in the bathroom,
you'd still miss the pivotal part of the movie or the second scene,
in which they flash the leading man's naked derriere. So, you
cross your legs and you hold it...and you hold it until that first
credit rolls and you sprint to the bathroom, about ready to explode
all over your internal organs.
And at the bathroom, you find a line of women that makes you
think there's a half-price sale on Mel Gibson's underwear in there.
So, you wait and smile politely at all the other ladies, also
crossing their legs and smiling politely. And you finally get
closer. You check for feet under the stall doors. Every one is
occupied. You hope no one is doing frivolous things behind those
stall doors, like blowing her nose or checking the contents of
her wallet.
Finally, a stall door opens and you dash, nearly knocking down
the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't
latch. It doesn't matter. You hang your handbag on the door hook,
yank down your pants and assume The Stance. Relief. More relief.
Then your thighs begin to shake. You'd love to sit down but you
certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper
on it, so you hold The Stance as your thighs experience a quake
that would register an eight on the Richter scale.
To take your mind off it, you reach for the toilet paper. Might
as well be ready when you are done. The toilet paper dispenser
is empty. Your thighs shake more. You remember the tiny napkin
you wiped your fingers on after eating buttered popcorn. It would
have to do. You crumble it in the puffiest way possible. It is
still smaller than your thumbnail. Someone pushes open your stall
door because the latch doesn't work and your pocketbook whams
you in the head. "Occupied!" you scream as you reach
out for the door, dropping your buttered popcorn napkin in a puddle
and falling backward, directly onto the toilet seat.
You get up quickly, but it's too late. Your bare bottom has made
contact with all the germs and life forms on the bare seat because
YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that there was any, even
if you had enough time to.
And your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew,
because her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because,
frankly, "You don't know what kind of diseases you could
get." And by this time, the automatic sensor on the back
of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream
of water akin to a fountain and then it suddenly sucks everything
down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser
for fear of being dragged to China.
At that point, you give up. You're finished peeing. You're soaked
by the splashing water. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with
a Chiclet wrapper you found in your pocket, then slink out inconspicuously
to the sinks. You can't figure out how to operate the sinks with
the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a
dry paper towel and walk past a line of women, still waiting,
cross-legged and unable to smile politely at this point.
One kind soul at the very end of the line points out that you
are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long! as
the Mississippi River. Where did that come from ? You yank the
paper rom your shoe, plunk it in the woman's hand and say warmly,
"Here. You might need this."
At this time, you see your spouse, who has entered, used and
exited his bathroom and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting
for you. "What took you so long?" he asks, annoyed.
This is when you kick him sharply in the shin and go home.
This is dedicated to all women everywhere who have ever had to
deal with a public toilet. And it finally explains to all you
men what takes us so long.
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