Originally this was going to be a reply to mozaic_rubie, but due to reply limitations with Live Journal, it has become its own entry since I’ve obviously violated the 9,620 character limit. Here’s a point by point answer to all your questions MR. Make sure you’ve read this entry before continuing.
Oh why not let all the secrets out…> From our perspective, it is rather strange to see contraptions
> on the wall on one side and then on the other, the stalls.
You’d think the answer is efficiency, that one has to do #1 more than #2 (which is still way more often than #3). The answer, however, is cost — it is cheaper to put in a urinal than a stall. The TOC (total cost of ownership) is lower too, if you don’t provide toilet paper, people can’t use it, no one using it means no demand, which means the cost for supplies is zero.
> When I was a mere child, it confused me to no end as to why
> the boys had to stand up to take care of business.
And little boys wondered why women wanted to lie down to have sex. Things are a different elevations apparently.
> Why shake and not use TP?
Because, for the most part, there is no splatter. There’s no mess. Given that the shut off valve is located more toward the base than the front, any extra that’s still in the pipes can be coaxed out and you’re done. It’s rarely more than a single drop.
On an amusing note, I worked with a guy who would go into the rest room, wash his hands, take a whiz and leave. I asked him about this, and instead of getting the “In the Marines, they teach us not to piss on our hands” response, I got something entirely different: “Look, I know where my d_ck has been all day, it’s my hands that I have no idea what they’ve touched.”
That made me think (though not adopt his behavior), if one takes a shower, puts on clean underwear, and keeps things packaged all day, just how unsanitary is it really? Anyhow, I digress.
> And then there is the whole rearranging thing that takes place too.
Either something sensitive is being pinched, squished, or a hair is being pulled from it’s root. There’s the downside of being external.
> I had one boy friend that had little body movement when putting
> the lil guy back.
This may be some kind of retraction back through the underwear, while attempting to avoid shredding it on the teeth of the zipper. And oh yes, it happens. Rarely. You usually get one or two good ones in childhood before your brian says, “ah ah ah… never again.”
> How does a young boy learn the do’s and don’ts of the
> sandbox?
Sadly by trial and error. Often taught to pee by their moms, the goal is to not miss the target.
Moms, if you’re out there, stop trying to teach little boys to go like little girls. We can’t [easily] just sit and go — the sheer biological mechanics required are such that there’s an out then down, which creates a crimp, and therefore prevents the physical action from taking place. That’s why you’ll see little boys who are trying to pee from a sitting position bending over. Otherwise, they’ll be spraying the towel rack. And we know that’s wrong — even though everyone knows they’re not for the “guests” but decoration.
> Dad teaches the routine and then the kids in kindergarten or
> pre-school?
Dads want nothing to do with this. It isn’t sports, television, or beer related.
> In our stalls , no one really knows what the other person
> is doing, but in a mens stall…well that can only mean
> one thing. Bad beef burrito.
Pretty much. Well, there is one other thing, but the social ridicule of getting caught is enough to discourage that.
> In a womans bathroom, there is a kindship of sorts.
This never happens. Even distasteful bragging jokes are prohibited.
> Women talk to each other from one stall to the other.
Remember, men like to do one task at a time — multitasking in this capacity is beyond our capabilities and desire. Recall that when men talk, it isn’t to shoot the breeze, it’s because there is a necessary communication. We don’t have “just listen to my problem but don’t fix it” moments, we’re solid hard core fix it people. For a man to say anything in the bathroom implies that he’s in dire need of assistance and has only done so at the expense of his last shred of dignity. Even if it’s fallen off, we’ve fallen in, and shattered our hip, we’d much rather wait for everyone else to go home from work and crawl out by our fingernails with our soiled underwear down at our knees than ask for assistance. Hell, even Elvis died sitting on the John. There was a man of honor to The Code.
> Sharing TP is also a known thing to happen from time to time.
Men are assholes. It’s a dog eat dog world out there, and if you were dumb enough to enter into a stall without checking supplies first, well, you deserve. Improvise. That’s why they had McGuiver on television. It’s like leaving the toilet seat up — who in their right mind sits down bare bottomed without checking first?
> No walls, just side by side johns where we could see each other.
Oh, it gets better. Often in areas of higher security, they remove the doors. While you don’t have lateral viewers, you DO have front on viewers. Ever notice why men take the news paper with them? We’re not reading, it’s a visibility shield from onlookers — of course we can’t *say* that, so we’re “using time efficiently.”
> One thing I still don’t understand it when someone goes into
> the stall, the first thing they do is flush it once maybe
> twice before they pull the paper covering to use. What the
> hell is that about?
Remember, men are engineers and that provides us with valuable insight. Also remember, men do not want to ask for help or admit their own stupidity. Consequently, this is a dual purpose defense mechanism under the guise of sanitation.
As men, we know that on a cost savings toilet, you get 1.6 gallons per flush. While this is enough to wash away liquid, it doesn’t cause enough vacuum to always remove all solid matter. Thus even though the water MAY look clear, we’re aware that if we were to sit, plop, and get splashed on the toosh, we could be picking up someone else’s doo doo.
Given that the guy next to us only hears one or two flushes before we start, he’s left to assume the prior occupant either didn’t flush, or the toilet didn’t get it all. He’s happy because HIS toilet didn’t have this problem, and he gets an instant ego boost for making the right decision of which stall to choose.
Meanwhile, what’s really going on is a systems check. I’m aware that if the toilet starts to backup with clean water on a flush, I should move to another stall. The next person to use the stall will see the high water level and implicitly not use it.
If a toilet survives two flushes, this is about 3 gallons of water, which is enough to dislodge any solid materials from the pipes. That way we know that when WE flush our solid matter, we will not be greeted with over flowing pooh, and then have to go tell building maintenance of our stupidity. Plunger Bubba would come up, make a snide comment about the size of the load, the smell, what we had for lunch, or why we used so much paper — ensuring the toilet won’t overflow not only is a matter of public convenience, but insures that we won’t be publicly humiliated by someone’s job it is to carry a brush.
It’s liberal water conservationist thoughts like this that cause home toilets to overflow only during parties. Hold the plunger down until the tank is dry and gasping for air for Pete’s sake! As an American, whose God Given Right it is to be wasteful and thumb the world, I ask you which costs less — the extra 1.6 gallons of waste at 2 cents per flush -or- the $175/hr plumber with a 2 hour minimum charing overtime and has no spare parts in his truck with the added cost of getting shag carpets dry cleaned of human feces?
One final observation is made before putting that paper down — how far the back splash is. Some toilets actually flush so violently they spurt on the seat, floor, or on the departing occupant. This way we know if the puddle on the floor is piss or H2O, same for the seat. We know to stand to the side, flush with our foot, and how quickly to depart after triggering a flush.
This is why men HATE auto-flushing toilets. When you lean forward to pee (see above), it thinks you’ve left, and when you lean back it thinks there’s someone new, it goes to give them a fresh bowl, and in the process created a horrific vacuum sucking your ass into the void.
> We think things when we see others in the bathroom even
> though we don’t say them.
Like what?!?
> And you men never think anything about the other men……
> hmmmmm if you guys did I’m sure you wouldn’t admit it.
Okay. Let me be real clear about this. I don’t want there to be any misconceptions, errors in communication, or mistaken messages read between the lines.
HELL NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NADA. WE DO NOT THINK ABOUT MEN. WE DO NOT LOOK AT OTHER MEN. WE DON’T ACKNOWLEDGE OUR OWN REFLECTION. NOTHING. NO WAY. NEVER. NO HOW. PERIOD. NADA.
… EVER.
> I wonder what it is like in a mens room in a bar, where for
> example, all the men in there were looking to get a little
> something something to go home with and it is the survival
> of the fittest persay…intersting thought.
The code is universally the same, whether you are in a bar, dorm, at work, a concert, Wolf Trap, or stuck without facilities in the middle of nowhere on a nature hike with Danny.
Keep this in mind — drunk men can’t aim. And that means a mess. Now you know that men won’t say anything, not that they made the mess, nor that they observed one. As such, it is rank in there.
Men are too cool to use mulch and dead flowers to cover the smell.
Want to know why public restrooms are so horrific? Because anyone with any sense of non-emergency condition waits until they can get home. It’s all the people with troublesome bowels who’ve waited until the last possible minute who use those places. From that image alone, you can imagine what happens behind closed doors… assuming you have any.
You might think that the news papers in front of urinals are informational. No. Their secondary purpose is to keep your gaze focused away from another man’s weiner. But their real purpose is in the “in case of emergency, break glass” variety — you may need access.
> But if they were to do that all the time out…..then I guess
> they would be considered a wussy or something?
You got it. Anytime a guy consistently runs for the stall, you gotta wonder what his diet is, or why he’s such a momma’s boy.