Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Have a seat

I love it when it’s my turn! It’s so fun to play with ideas and see what might possibly be eeked out into a semi-entertaining post.

I thought I might write about condiments, and how Ellie is personally offended by the very existence of ketchup.

I thought I might write about scheduling the hour long reflexology massages that Beth and I are going to have next week after the big run, and my thought process when asked: "Do you prefer a male or a female technician?"

I thought I might write more about my girl, maybe the funny encounter we had over the weekend when I made her try on and judge every pair of undies in her unholy mess of a dainty drawer.

Or maybe the fact that she is terrified of the automatic flush. She is paralyzed with fear when perched atop a suspicious toilet. I don’t know how she pees with this much angst. You should see her face. I’ve told her about the motion sensors, and so she is frozen. She. Will. Not. Move. Anything. But. Her. Eyebrows. She has very expressive eyebrows. When she is done, she wants me to whisk her to what she considers a safe and reasonable distance from the scary toilet. Only then will she wipe and get on with her life.

When my niece, who is now a gorgeous almost-16 year old superstar, was little, she would only use white toilet seats. I remember one time we were at Laguardia, and my mom was taking this child to the bathroom, and you know those stairs by baggage claim? My sister yelled up to my mom: “Make sure the seats aren’t black!”

I didn’t have kids at that time, so I just chalked this up to generally weird things that I might need to know about kids some day. Black seats = bad. Okay, check.

But now that I have had the distinct pleasure to spend many, many, many hours of my important life in bathroom stalls with children of my own and often of my friends and acquaintances, I understand the critical issues around toilet seat selection.

At home, no matter how gross or uninviting your bathroom appears, you can sit on the seat. It’s your family; those are the arses of your peeps. Friends’ houses are fairly safe, but you have to be careful if you’re using the kids’ bathroom. Chances are very good that you’ll sit on some wet. Ick. I don’t care whose wet it is, I don’t care if you yourself just cleaned the toilet and you know that it’s rinse residue on you. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to sit in wet on the toilet.

If YOU sprinkle when you tinkle, ARE you neat and wipe the seat?

Good God, where was I?

What the hell am I talking about?

Toilet seats?!
Okay. So it’s a post about toilet seats! What fun!

There is the matter of toilet seats, or lack thereof, at the beach. The thing is, it’s so awesome to have a toilet at the beach! There is almost always toilet paper, and stall doors are for chumps anyway. I have no beef with hovering over the creepy metal rim once the seal has been broken.

Beach = Beer = Bathroom. The circle of life.

When my kids need to pee, I just want them to go in the ocean! The boy is too old and worldly to be dragged into the doorless ladies’ room, and the men’s room? Filled with crazy murderous loons and pervs, obviously. But boys can just pee on a tree or a rock, whatever. My girl? If she needs to join me, it can get a little tricky. She can’t hover; her legs are like one foot long. Sometimes there are seat covers, those are handy. But they always rip, and are you supposed to punch out the middle hole, or just let the force of your stream bust through it? We usually either fashion our own seat cover out of toilet paper, or just give the seat a good wipe down before placing her precious sandy buns atop. It’s a gamble, but at least there is no chance of automatic flushing. The real danger is in what you’re standing in. Ew.

Have you ever seen those rigs where you press a button and a plastic seat cover scoots around from one end of the seat to the other? Do you trust them?

What about this:
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/16139635/detail.html

Are you fucking kidding me?

But I would be totally psyched to find one at the beach.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, I wish I had one of those toidys. I just fell off my bike, trying to get home to clean the dang toilets. I'm going to have a bruise on my right butt the size of Mount Vesuvius.

I love taking your girl to pee. It's a challenge of athletic skill and speed, getting her off the john before the evil automatic flusher flushes.

Me, You, or Ellie said...

I have two things to say.

First, I changed the name of this post, it was originally called "you can pick your seat..." I was driving to work thinking about it, and realized that I had it all wrong. I was thinking "you can pick your seat and you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friends' seats". But then I realized that this is all wrong! It's your friends NOSES that you can't pick!

The second thing is that although some of my peeps are ascared to comment for various and mysterious reasons. But they sometimes e-mail us lovely little snippets. My mom said:

I read your toilet seat blog, was cracking up. Poor Boogsie, and poor Erin back in the day. One time at Fall's Landing she had to go and wouldn't use the black toilet. She wanted me to take her outside to pee, said "mom lets me pee outside" - didn't happen....... mom

Anonymous said...

Too funny, and too true, Jacquie. My youngest is right now in the please-don't-flush-the-toilet-until-I'm-safely-away-from-it stage. I try to comply, but sometimes forget. Man does she get pissed, or just bursts into tears. Poor baby.

As you know, I too try to encourage peeing in the ocean, although this often requires the simultaneous reminder that you cannot do the same in the pool (not always easy for children to grasp); it also often involves watching your child try to gauge just how far out they have to be to reach the pee-safe zone. Many times they do not get quite this far and you have the distinct joy (horror?) of watching them pee above the waterline. But at least you don't need a seat!

Anonymous said...

I forgot one thing in my comment above. Do you remember Monty, Jacquie? Lili's gigantic Great Pyrenees who always had drool dripping out of his mouth and down his neck? Well he liked to drink out of the toilet, especially at night.

Can you even imagine sitting on that wet in the dark of night? No? Well I can, I did it repeatedly (hey, it's hard to remember to "hover" when half asleep) and let me tell you it's not something you'll ever forget. Yuk! On the other hand, it makes rinse residue and other lesser forms of wet look welcoming by comparison.

Anonymous said...

Monty sounds disgusting.

Thank you for changing the title, Jacquie. Thank you, thank you, for the reassurance that we can still pick our friends' seats.

Anonymous said...

Of course I remember Monty, he was a sweetheart. I have photos of him with Morgan's whole puppy-sized head inside his mouth.

And Ellie, you can pick your friends' seats AND you can pick their noses. I encourage you to do so!

Anonymous said...

But can I do them both at ONCE?

Bimbo Baggins said...

Um, hi. I wandered over here from Pioneer Woman and I have to tell you, that you kick ass.

My punk is 6 and she is also terrified of the auto flushers, or as she calls them, "satans mouth". Good times.

Anyway, off to read more of your posts! Feel free to stop by my blog...please don't be frightened by my foul language and whoreish behavoir!

Anonymous said...

Ellie - why else did God give you two hands?

Dirty Pirate Hooker - wow! Dig your name - I'll be sure to check out your blog, cussing whores are really the only ones I'll communicate with.

Rita said...

Oh, toilet problems. When Alex was 4 and I was enormously pg with Katie, we took a train from Austin, TX to Chicago and Alex refused to use the toilet in our cabin. So, we had about a dozen pairs of his soiled and sink-washed pants hanging about our quarters to dry. That's why I really don't give a rip if Liz ever decides to give the potty a try. Diapers really are so much easier.

Fear of the automatic flusher. It makes sense. It is something that sane people ought to fear. The girl has her wits about her, you can say that!

Anonymous said...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry... it just came to my attention that someone was referred to this post by a google search for "doorless toilet stalls dad"

I shit you not.

Anonymous said...

Is that his blog? "doorless toilet stalls dad" It's got a nice ring to it...

Bimbo Baggins said...

yeah, people search for some WEIRD things. I get stuff all the time for brother sister sex. Not entirely sure why my blog pops up with that...but whatever! There are some sick, sick people out there!

Anonymous said...

WOW. Wish I had as many readers as YOU do!!

I have never set on a toilet seat outside of my home! I can straddle anything that must be used for bodily exits!

But when you are in the camping type of facilities where the hole goes where no man has gone before, I just KNOW there are eyes on my suspended butt.

Anonymous said...

Wait a minute. You have NEVER sat on a toilet seat that was not your own? Wow!

Hey, when we're camping, I'm just happy to HAVE a toilet. Squatting's tough on the ol' knees.....