And lo, it came to be that at the Answering of the Trivia, in the Land of the Snow People, I did after a Drynke of cool Water, feel the need to void my bladder.
Man thing: there are rules about urinals. Some men– they are evil, and shunned by proper society– ignore these rules. Most of us do not.
I walked into the men’s room at the Fraternal Order of Police bingo hall to be greeted with the following: four urinals, only the rightmost of which was guarded by the civilization-preserving little metal wall, and two stalls, one of which was a wheelchair accessible stall and was unoccupied. The situation at the urinals was unacceptable; I went into the stall.
Now, let’s make this as clear as possible: I needed to pee.
I discovered quickly that the reason that the door was hanging open was that the latch on the door was broken. I could not, in fact, actually close the door and latch it. I fiddled with it for a minute, pushed it shut, and figured “screw it” and went to pee. Got as far as unzipping my pants.
And felt, rather than heard, the door slowly swinging open behind me. And discovered something: while one would think that peeing in an enclosed area would be preferable to peeing at a urinal, particularly when said urinals are the unacceptable, barbarous bowl-stuck-to-the-wall type and not proper stand-up urinals, thus making only one of the four actually usable (the one with the privacy screen), it was in fact much much worse to be peeing in a stall where there was a very good chance that at any second someone could see the door, assume that it was unoccupied, and barge into the stall with me.
I zipped up, left the stall, discovered that the single privacy-shielded urinal was available, and used that instead.
Feel free to revel in what a dumbass I am.(*)
(*) WordPress just corrected “dumbass,” which is a word that 1) is a word and 2) I use all the time, to “dumbs,” which is 1) not a word and 2) never used by anyone. What the fuck?
