Now, hard as it is to believe, I am sometimes capable of being inconsiderate and selfish and making the world a slightly less nice place to live for my fellow human beings. But I try my best to think of others, especially in those all too frequent cases where my Gandhi like actions don't actually put me out too much.
Despite long experience of walking this earth and dealing with the stupid humans on it, I am still amazed by how some people just don't seem to bother with easy to achieve niceties.
In the gym changing rooms - and how many times these things happen in the gym changing rooms - this afternoon, I was getting ready to go for a swim, but needed to avail myself of the toilet facilities beforehand in order to expel some fecal matter.
A bit like a scatalogical Goldilocks I was presented with three toiletery choices. In my gym changing room there is one urinal (which was not really appropriate for the biological function I was about to perform and I discounted using it without any conscious thought, even though it was unoccupied - maybe in an emergency I could do my business there) and two cubicles with fully functioning water closets. I opened the first door to find that the floor was rather wet. Let's be generous and say that someone who had just been swimming or in the shower had totally failed to dry themselves (which seems to be the way that some men like to roll in the gym, even though courtesy and common sense dictates that it might be less selfish to dry oneself in the shower area) and had then dropped a berocca tablet on to the floor. You might expect to see a toilet floor swimming in liquid in a pub at about 11pm, but it takes a special kind of person to make such a mess of the facilities on a (presumably) sober afternoon.
I really only had one choice left and so opened the second cubicle door. It was unlocked, but as I pushed it inwards it was clocked by a grey haired man in his fifties who was standing and (I would assume, I didn't look too closely) urinating into the bowl. I apologised, though I am not sure why. He really should have locked the door. You'd think after his long years of life he would have worked this out by now.
I have to say that I did wonder why he was in the cubicle and not using the urinal. Some men, myself included, suffer from bladder shyness, but there was only one urinal, in essence making it a third separate facility, though admittedly doorless. Yet if he was that worried about someone else observing his python syphoning, then you'd think he might have locked the door. It's almost as if he quite enjoyed the idea of being interrupted mid-flow by a stranger. Let's not judge. Perhaps he just likes to wee behind a closed door, but is a little claustrophobic and afraid of ending up locked in (though what kind of
fucking idiot would let that happen to them).
Anyway, none of this is the issue. I was forced to wait for the man to conclude his urinary affairs, and entered the cubicle just as soon as he left. But just as I was about to sit down I checked the seat, which was suspiciously in the down position and saw that there were splashes of a liquid that I think I was safe to assume was not camomile tea.
I am not knocking him for lacking accuracy. I am a bit younger than him, but still appreciate that the penis is not the efficient urine delivery system that you'd think it would be after so many million years of evolution, especially in the more elderly gentleman. What i object to is the fact that this man of maybe 55 years of age had dnot got the common sense or common decency to lift the toilet seat before commencing his micturition. Again if this had been a late night pub situation and the seat was already sodden with the emissions of a hundred mis-firing drunks, then I could understand his reluctance to get his hands dirty. But it was the (previously) rather clean facilities of a gym and there was a basin and soap nearby if he really felt disgusted to have touched a seat that a few men had put their bottom cheeks on.
I just couldn't believe that a man who has been around for over half a century has not yet learned to lift a toilet seat before emiction. And if he really had some kind of phobia then at least he could have cleaned up after his spillage, especially given he knew there was someone waiting outside and would be coming straight in and know exactly what he'd done. Perhaps he felt that I was partly at fault. Maybe the calamity had been a result of me opening the door and hitting him mid-flow. But that was still his fault. He should have locked the door. The pissing idiot.
A part of me wanted to step back out of the cubicle and confront him about his selfish behaviour. It would have been embarrassing for both of us, but particularly for him and it would be some kind of compensation to chastise him in front of others and ask him why he hadn't learned to lift the seat some five decades previously.
But being me I just let it go and faced with the option of going in the cubicle with the puddle or in a urinal not designed for solids or just getting some tissue and cleaning up the seat myself, I went for option 3. Because I am 40 and not 4 and thus able to act in a practical manner without worrying too much. My hand only touched toilet tissue. Perhaps if the man was so phobic of germs he might have used some tissue to protect him as he lifted the seat.
Instead I will use this blog to point out to any man who has not yet realised this fact. If you are going to wee in a public convenience, then you are supposed to lift the seat. Perhaps no one ever told you this. But it's what you have to do. If you like to wee on toilet seats then please do this in the privacy of your own home. And once you are beyond the age of six you are supposed to clean up after yourself.
And old grey hair, if you are reading this, then next time you do this I will confront you about it, as well as taking a photo of you and putting it up on this website. You are worse than Hitler, Stalin and Fern Britton combined.
