After chugging a nearly full water bottle before leaving work, I decided it would be best to pay a visit to the restroom, lest I sit in traffic with a full bladder.
Maybe it's just me, but I am very set in my ways, especially when it comes to public restrooms. It used to take a lot for me to use a public restroom--A LOT. I'm certain that the number of times I used the facilities in high school is probably less than 100--and we're only talking number one here. Number two? In public? Come on, people. That's completely out of the question. As you can imagine, I did not find much comfort in transitioning to communal bathrooms in college.
Aside: you should know that as I walked into the bathroom I was thinking to myself (because I always think to myself in a narrative voice, strange but true): "So, what are you going to blog about? You need a note for the day. Your last post didn't have a note. Think really hard about what lesson you learned today. Oh, and make it funny." (A demanding narrative voice at that.)
Like I said, I'm very set in my ways in restrooms--even in the case of number one. There is really only one stall I like to use. And I'll use that same stall every time I'm in that bathroom. A little piece of me dies when I walk into the bathroom and someone else is using that stall. And sometimes, I'm tempted to wait, but with three open stalls that would be weird. The problem tonight was not that someone beat me out of my stall, nope. I had free reign of the place. The problem was that someone had used the stall before me and didn't flush.
Now I really do wonder if it's just me, but my first instinct is to mutter something under my breath (i.e., "what your flushing finger is broken?") and pick another stall. But then there's a little piece of me that thinks I can make this situation better just by flushing the toilet--like who am I? Smokey the Bear of public restrooms? Remember, only YOU can prevent the bathroom from being disgraced by negligent flushers. Guess what I chose to do tonight?
Note to self: When there is a wad of toilet paper sitting in the toilet, choose another stall.
Just to be clear, it was only toilet paper in the toilet. If there was more of a surprise waiting there, I would not be nearly so righteous. All signs pointed toward flushing being the safe and simple solution. Not so much. When I flushed it (yes, with my broken flushing finger), it gurgled at me and started swirling water around and around, faster and faster. This is about when I started stammering, "No, no, no, no..." hoping that may stop the water rising in the bowl. Whenever I've faced this problem at home, the water always seems to stop before it crests over the edges--just like magic. Either that or I drop to my hands and knees and turn off the water flow as fast as possible. Too bad neither of those things happened. The water just kept coming and splashed all over the floor as I stood there shaking my head at it. It eventually stopped, but there were definitely signs of flooding--and I made it happen.
Mortified, I stumbled back to my office. Since it was after 5:00, the receptionist was no longer available so I called security, and was transferred to facilities, where I reported an overflowing toilet in the fourth floor bathroom. And to make matters worse, I had to give the facilities person my name and e-mail alias, you know, for the record. While we were talking about that record, I made sure that she knew I was not the root cause of the problem (stopping short of telling her that I only use this restroom for number one and I was just doing my part to keep the bathroom clean), but somewhere at work there is a record with my name on it that refers to a clogged toilet and a flooded bathroom. There are a million reasons why I find that horrible, but the one delight I have is that I found my note for the day.
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