THE STANCE

[MaggieRedwings]

My best friend just sent this to me and I had to post it for everyone. I am sure we all know this but for us the luxury of time does not exist when the loo calls. The following is really comical if you just do mental images as you read it.

THE STANCE

When you have to visit a public bathroom, you usually find a line of women, so you smile politely and take your place. Once it's your turn, you check for feet under the stall doors. Every stall is occupied. Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter.

The dispenser for the modern "seat covers" (invented by someone's Mom, no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook, if there were one, but there isn't - so you carefully but quickly drape it around your neck, (Mom would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume "The Stance."

In this position your aging, toneless thigh muscles 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." To take your mind off your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mother's voice saying, "Honey, if you had tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!"

Your thighs shake more.

You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday - the one that's still in your purse. That would have to do. You crumple 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. The door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your chest, and you and your purse topple backward against the tank of the toilet.

"Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, lose your footing altogether, and slide down directly onto the TOILET SEAT. It is wet of course. You bolt up, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper - not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your mother would be utterly appalled if she knew, because, you're certain; her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, dear, "You just don't KNOW what kind of diseases you could get." By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, propelling a stream of water like a fire hose that somehow sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too.

At that point, you give up.

You're soaked by the spewing water and the wet toilet seat. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket and then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks. You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past the line of women, still waiting. You are no longer able to smile politely to them. A kind soul at the very end of the line points out a piece of toilet paper trailing from your shoe. (Where was that when you NEEDED it?)

You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it the woman's hand and tell her warmly, "Here, you just might need this." As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has long since entered, used and left the men's restroom. Annoyed, he asks, "What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?"

This is dedicated to women everywhere who deal with a public restroom (rest??? you've got to be kidding!!). It finally explains to the men what really does take us so long. It also answers their other commonly asked question about why women go to the restroom in pairs.

It's so the other gal can hold the door, hang onto your purse and hand you Kleenex under the door.

Love, Maggie

[tex]

LOL. I don't know why I'm reading this topic, (let alone responding to it), but I thought this was an appropriate place to mention some statistics about health hazards that I came across a few years ago. The lady who wrote the article that this quote comes from, (Mary Roach), is a contributing editor to Health magazine. She quotes some statistics from research by Chuck Gerba, (who is the guru of bathroom and kitchen germs):

Simply sitting down on bacteria can't hurt anyone, except possibly the bacteria. Nor is there much bacteria on a toilet seat to sit on. According to Gerba, toilet seats suffer an undeserved reputation for filth. In 1998, he and two colleagues took swabs from 14 sites in household bathrooms and kitchens, and cultured them to check for E. coli and other fecal bacteria. "The toilet seat was one of the cleanest spots in the house," he reports. "The refrigerator door handle was dirtier. And the cutting board. There are 200 times more fecal bacteria on a cutting board." In this case, the fecal material usually comes from chickens -- who literally have the shi* squeezed out of them during processing -- and can contain salmonella.

"If you have a choice between licking a cutting board or a toilet seat," concludes Gerba, "pick the toilet seat."

Even toilet seats in public rest rooms are not especially germy. In a 1995 study, Gerba found E. coli on only one out of 59 public rest room toilet seats -- most likely from the toilet water, which aerosolizes into a microscopic mist when the toilet flushes. There were far more fecal bacteria in sinks and on sanitary napkin dispensers, the latter being commonly overlooked by janitors. (Other commonly overlooked bacterial ick zones, as determined by Gerba over the years: hotel TV remotes, vending machine buttons and bank pens.)


If you'd like to read the rest of this interesting article, it's at:

http://archive.salon.com/health/col/roa ... print.html

Even after reading all this, I guess there's something emotionally imbalanced in me, because I'd still rather lick a cutting board, than a toilet seat. LOL.

Tex

[starfire]

I agree with you about where I'd rather lick, Wayne. and you do have to be careful about sitting down on a toilet seat because it's more than likely "sprinkled" by the previous person who is afraid to sit down themselves, and don't clean up their "sprinkles" for the next person.

Wish they'd put this sign in all stalls..............

"If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat."

Shirley

[kate_ce1995]

Ah, and then there is the engineering convention. No lines at the ladies room, plenty of time (no guilt about the line), and usually supplies because there haven't been too many people in there.

Hee Hee...I love watching the guys in line at those things. PAYBACK!

Katy

[Polly]

Well...............as long as we're telling bathroom stories:

Over the years I have gotten telephone calls from frantic couples where one of them has come down with a case of sexually transmitted disease like gonorrhea or "crabs". They have insisted to their their partner that they caught the disease from a toilet seat or from a dirty hotel bed, etc. The partner, of course, demands to speak with a physician to confirm this possibility. When I am asked if this is possible, I always answer "yes". Of course, as Wayne says, it is highly unlikely; however, far be it from me to be the one to put a wedge in a relationship. And, as I have learned in medicine, there are no absolutes. It is always possible, even if not probable. LOL!

Ewwww Shirley, I'm with you on the wet seat. Even more disgusting is a seat with blood smeared on it - it makes me worry about HIV.

Speaking of toilet seats, did you see that case where an employee at a Home Depot put super glue on a public toilet seat and a customer got stuck and had to be taken away by the ambulance crew with seat attached to butt? Major lawsuit, I'm sure. Now that's an embarrassing siutation.

Love,

Polly

P.S. Mags, I've seen the "stance" before , but it rings so true reading it again!

[tex]

Well, I can't top the superglue story, but back when I was in college, I moved into a new dorm, my second year, and on our floor, we had a guy from one of those furrin' countries where the custom for "doing one's business" in public restrooms, involves squating over a trench. One day someone was looking for a free stall, and not seeing any feet under the door, pushed the stall door open to find this guy perched with his feet on the toilet seat, and casually "doing his business".

Back in those days, most of us Texans weren't even aware that there was a world outside the borders of Texas, let alone a world where people perched like chickens on a toilet seat, so he had a lot of explaining to do, and received a lot of criticism and coaching on future restroom etiquette. LOL. Old habits are hard to break though, so I doubt that he ever changed his routine while he stayed in that dorm.

Anyway, the standing joke in that wing of the dorm was that we were all going to get athlete's foot of the butt before we got out of there. Hahahahaha.

Love,
Tex