When I was reminiscing about London on Friday, I was reminded of something that hotel had that I wish we had more of in the States.  Its bathroom stall walls extended all the way to the floor and I was in complete comfort with no feeling to be rushed if someone went into the stall next to me.  We have a dearth of low-hanging bathroom stall walls in the United States.  I’m not sure if that’s a way to keep the hobos out or to prevent U.S. Senators from practicing “wide-stance-ery” or if it’s simply a way to make sure you’re not comfortable and don’t loiter until you lose circulation in your legs, but there are stalls in the States where you can almost see your pooping neighbor’s shins.  I’m assuming this is the same way in the female stalls too.

It’s bad enough that most urinals have a completely useless wall between each unit (no pun intended) that couldn’t stop sideways splatter, much less any furtive sideway glances that test one’s peripheral vision skills.  Even worse are the stadium troughs where you’re shoulder to shoulder with the next drunkard and you’re all holding your respective units and trying not to make eye-to-eye or eye-to-someone-else’s-wang contact.  I know it’s much harder to be a lady for a lot of reasons, but the female population has it made when it comes to you not having to display your hoo-hah to the general public simply to go #1.  Ladies, imagine having a huge lady to the left of you and a drunk college girl to the right of you all squatting down next to each other, forcing you to make inevitable contact with their shoulders or elbows, and then trying to perform your excretory duties as though you were in an assembly line.  I thankfully don’t have a “shy bladder” but there are those out there who have issues going in public places and this is not the proper venue for those tortured souls who can’t “evacuate” in front of others.

Maybe I’m the only one who does this but I always have to wait until the coast is clear before I exit my stall.  If I’m almost done with #2 and someone comes in to do #1, I’ll wait until they’re done and gone before I head to the sink.  It’s as though I’m ashamed of what I just did as though I were a naughty dog and just went on the carpet.  It’s just another reason to eventually commit me to the loony bin after I am able to cross off a few more tasks on the OCD Crazy Checklist.

For those who don’t want to be disgusted, you can stop reading now.  What I’ve included below is an email I got from my friend Erich in January who happened to be repulsed by his work bathrooms that day.  I never knew when I could properly segue into this horrific but absolutely hilarious tale but today’s post about public bathrooms seems to be the best way.  Again, you’ve been warned.  For those of you with a sick sense of humor, enjoy.

Seeing as there are precious few people that I know who can truly appreciate this, I know I've mentioned a few times to you that we have a whole Latin American contingent here works on the other end of the building with me and that we all share the same bathroom.

Well, I go in there today and we've got a full house.  Every stall manned up with some affront to nature being performed therein.  I mean, the smell so bad that it could choke a horse and the fact that the heat is turned up to, oh, about 100 doesn't help.

So I decide to traverse downstairs to the "Oasis."  I get to the Oasis and it's empty, calm, some might say tranquil.  In the first stall I am greeted by the stew from hell.  A veritable witch's cauldron comprised of someone's chunky liquid stool, human lemonade and way too many wads of stained up TP for one toilet to handle....and oh, the aroma is just delightful.  So I move on to the Handi-stall.  Normally I make a bee line straight for the Handi-Stall (the Cadillac of the bathroom stalls) as I like to take a wide stance (Hi Senator Craig) and it provides me with the maximum amount of distance away from a) the door, b) the urinals, and c) the next closest stall - but I had passed a guy on my way in and I could tell that this had been where he just came from.  I mean you never want to hop onto a toilet seat that still retains the ass-heat from the dude in front of you right?  So I reluctantly enter and I am greeted wit the still swirling semi-solid chunks of whatever bachelor #2 had had for dinner the night before (looked/tasted Mexican).....weeeeee!!! Round and round they go.  Ummm....pass.  Let's check the middle stall.  Now we all know that the middle stall is the red-headed step child of bathroom stalls.  It affords other inconsiderate, slack jawed mouth breathers the opportunity to drop the deuce on both sides of you.  Of course, the middle stall has not escaped the Botulism epidemic which has swept (Erich's company) today either.  Whoever the poor individual was who last defiled this porcelain convenience was gave the term "Green apple splatters" a new meaning.  It's one thing to have a little excrement fly off in a random direction during a massive anal-eruption, but this guy needs to see a doctor and fast.  The whole bowl was covered....front, back, sides, under the rim....what kind of Mount Ass-suvious type meltdown did this guy have?  He had to have had to wipe his entire butt....crack AND cheeks!

So finally I wound up going back to the handi-stall. By then the floaters had stopped trying to swim back up stream and the extra time had allowed the toilet seat to lose it's endothermic properties, but GOOD LORD, I think I am going to file a class action lawsuit on the Latin American group for raping my sinuses.