The Stance

My mother was a fanatic about public toilets.
As a little girl, she'd bring me in the stall, teach me to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat.
Then she'd carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat.

Finally, she'd demonstrate "The Stance".

This consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position
without actually letting any of your flesh make contact with the toilet seat.

By this time, I'd have wet down my leg.........And we'd go home.

I've had lots of experience with public toilets since then.
  I still find The Stance excruciatingly difficult to maintain when one's bladder is especially full.
When you have to "go" in a public bathroom, you find a line of women that makes you think there's a half-price sale on Mel Gibson's underwear in there.  
So you wait and smile politely at all the other ladies, also crossing their legs and smiling politely.

As you get closer. you check for feet under the stall doors.
Every one is occupied.

Finally, a stall door opens and you dash, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall.  
You get in to find the door won't latch.

It doesn't matter.

You hang your handbag on the door hook,
yank down your pants and assume "The Stance."

Relief.

More Relief.

Then your thighs begin to SHAKE.

You'd love to sit down but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper.
So you hold "The Stance' as your thighs experience a quake
that would register an eight on the Richter scale.

  To take your mind off it, you reach for the toilet paper.
Might as well be ready when you are done.

The toilet paper dispenser is empty.

Your thighs shake more.

You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on--that's in your purse.

It would have to do.

You crumble it in the puffiest way possible.
It is still smaller than your thumbnail.

  Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work....your pocketbook whams you in the head. "Occupied!" you scream as you reach out for the door.

At this point, you drop your tissue in a puddle and fall backward, directly onto the toilet seat.  
You get up quickly, but it's too late.

Your bare bottom has made contact with all the germs and life forms on the bare seat........
because YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that there was any, even if you had enough time to.

Your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew.
Her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because,
"You don't know what kind of diseases you could get."

(I'm not particularly fond of public toilets, especially those with powerful, red-eye sensors.
Those toilets know when you want them to flush. They are psychic toilets.)

Now I have confused their psychic ability by following my mother's advice
in assuming The Stance.
The automatic sensor on the back of the toilet flushes,
sending up a stream of water akin to a fountain.
It suddenly sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser
for fear of being dragged to China.  

At that point, you give up.
You're soaked by the splashing water.
You're exhausted.
You try to wipe with a Chicklet wrapper you found in your pocket.

"Ewwwwww..........!!!

You can't figure out how to operate the sinks with the automatic sensors,
so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past a line of women
...... still waiting, cross-legged and unable to smile politely at this point.

  One kind soul at the end of the line points out that you are trailing
a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long as the Mississippi River!
You yank the paper from your shoe,
plunk it in the woman's hand and say warmly,

"Here. You might need this."

At this time, you see your spouse, who has entered, used and exited his bathroom......
and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting for you.
 
"What took you so long?" he asks, annoyed.
This is when you kick him sharply in the shins and go home.  

~ Unknown ~
Written in behalf of Every Female

Music: "When You're Smiling"

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