Toilet Dilema

You know what really puts a damper on my day like receiving unexpected tax liens?

It’s when you grab some toilet paper and think you have about the right amount and the right dimensions but find out too late it wasn’t quite wide enough for that first wipe and you get some on your hand. You know what I’m talking about, because unless you have your own royal wiper, or you’re holding a mirror down around your knees to guide your decisions, then you’ve done the math wrong before on this and ended up with brown fingers.

It’s at this moment that you can tell the impulsive types from the planners. And don’t get me wrong, there’s no right or wrong decision on what to do next as long as you leave the bathroom eventually with clean hands. Either decision has its problems. And think about this next time you shake someone’s hands: at some point in the past, that hand has been smeared with the waste byproduct of that person’s prior day’s meals.

Generally speaking you can go one of two ways once this unfortunate event happens. You can continue with the job at hand (you’re a planner, you’re patient, you’re also disgusting). When you’re done you can get to the job of scrubbing the brown goo from your hand and then leave, smiling at whomever you meet, never intending to mention any of this to them or anyone else. Later you will wonder if you scrubbed under your fingernails thoroughly enough and head back to the bathroom, pretending you’re going to look for lost keys, but then you use your wife/husband/partner’s toothbrush to scrub under those nails once again. Don’t lie about it, I know you do this; you’re certainly not going to use your own toothbrush. Later on while you’re drifting off to sleep you realize that you’re not alone in having this occasional bathroom incidents and that your wife/husband/partner may have been using your toothbrush to do what you just did. After you rinse your mouth with bleach and Dawn dish soap, you switch to a Waterpik.

Now, your impulsive types, they will jump up from the toilet and want to deal with the messed hand right away. But think about the ramifications of this, you’re standing there with who knows what left undone in a region you cannot see. You may be dripping into your underwear while you’re cleaning your hands, leaving you with an even bigger problem of how to get rid of the underwear without anyone finding out why you had to. You consider burning them in a pan on the stove, or maybe burying them in the yard, but in the end you stuff them into an empty milk carton and hide that under a layer of old banana peels, moldy bread and coffee grounds (no one is searching under that even for a diamond ring). But even if you don’t drip, or if something doesn’t break off from the main source into your underwear, you’re still smearing that mess on your inner cheeks. You have insured that you will be walking around with a swampy bum that you were unable to properly clean, because when you got back to work on it after you were done with your hands there was no way to get it all tidied up. It’s too much like shaving your head without seeing it—you’re gonna miss a patch or two. But at least it shows you know how to prioritize, that you’re not afraid to take chances, and yes, you’re disgusting.

The French understand this problem, that’s why they created the bidet. No more guessing, no more toilets clogged with toilet paper glued together by feces. No more burning your underwear. No more wondering what your significant other is doing with your toothbrush. No more decisions at the market between Charmin and Northern trying to remember which is softer (because you’re a pampered 1^stworld asshole who spends way too much time worrying about mundane cleanliness problems while a two-year-old little girl over in some continent you will never visit has to drink water from under a meandering herd of muddy yaks who just peed into the only stagnant puddle for 81 miles in any direction).

The moral of this story is that the French aren’t as stupid as you thought and that you should lock up your toothbrush because no one is to be trusted around it. No one. We all look out for ourselves first and you second. Also, think about poor little Pita in Namibia drinking Yak pee next time you bitch about how rough Costco generic toilet paper is, you asshole.

Written by Uncle Leathers