As the 9 regular readers of Roundseventeen know, I don't usually post on Fridays. After a grueling week of semi-retirement, afternoon napping and duvet cover-washing, I'm just plain bushed. But this Friday is different.
And I'll tell you why.
Last week, I had the pleasure of going to a graduation party for a USC student who works with Ms. Muse. It was at the nearby Shay Hotel. And since I hadn't seen the latest results of the Culver City gentrification I was naturally eager to attend.
It was there, between my 2nd and 3rd Bloody Mary -- I mentioned I was semi-retired -- that I met John Michelman, a soft spoken 85 year old man who happened to be the grandfather of Rachel, the aforementioned graduate. In addition to being mishbuchah, John is an accomplished scientist from Harvard with an abiding interest in the world of writing.
He told me he had written a short essay on the value of Surface Tension as it is applied to airport public facilities. Being scatologically-inclined, I told him to send it to me and I'd "publish" it here on R17.
In the spirit of sharing this platform (see my story on David Sedaris sharing the stage with other writers) and encouraging anyone willing to pound the keyboard, I bring you John's tale of the reluctant ass gasket.
THE SAGA OF THE TOILET SEAT COVER
The year was 1985. I am at a very busy Atlanta airport.
After eating a Big Mac, fries for lunch, an untimely urge arrived. It was not to be ignored.
I headed to the men’s bathroom to attend to Nature's Call.
After entering an empty stall, I shut the door, closed the latch, hung up my suit coat (I was on a business call that day) checked the TP supply and dropped my pants and Jockey tidy whitey underwear to my ankles.
This is when the disaster happened.
I tried to extract a super thin tissue toilet seat cover from a full box affixed to the stall wall. There is no way this could be done without sufficiently tearing it to a totally unusable state.
Attempt number two had a similar result. Remember I was much too ready!!
Attempt number three took several minutes, but I was successful at having a useable cover. At this point I pondered, as I have in the past, over the orientation of the tissue on the toilet seat - flap in front or flap in the rear and was it gender related. I laughed and decided, who gives a you know what?
I carefully placed the third toilet seat cover on the toilet seat itself and before I could get my butt on it, with a loud WOOSH, it was sucked into the toilet and flushed away. That’s when I started to get really angry.
The only way to take care of what I had come to do in the first place was to out-smart (as a highly-trained scientist) this situation.
I carefully extracted a new toilet seat cover, opened the stall door, ever so slightly to see if anyone else was in the bathroom. With my pants and underwear (with a strong elastic band) at my ankles restricting my stride to about 8 inches, and the toilet seat cover with me, I scooted very slowly across the room to the closest sink praying to myself that no customer would come in. I then wet both hands and slapped water on both butt cheeks, pasted the toilet seat cover to my bare rear end, scooted back to the toilet and sat down on it like a gentleman and couldn’t stop chuckling.
What if someone saw me? What if they had a camera? Even worse, what if it was the cops?
No one came. I had defeated a catastrophe with ingenuity and this story is imbedded in my mind forever, as crappy as it is.
Agnes Pockels would be proud.
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