Super Serious Or Supercilious: From The Frontlines Of The Bathroom Zone.

{On a totally different note from Advent ... a reposting from approximately five years ago. A little bit of silliness. }

We, I recently discovered, have an even greater and more urgent need for female representation than I had imagined. We have a friend who just came back from visiting Germany and he was telling us about a new practice there where men are requested to sit down when doing what, uhm, they would usually do while standing up.

Peeing. Or what women, defying all our education and student loans, at times call 'going potty'. (Sigh. Anna Quindlen I am not.) There are apparently little signs - just like the ones we see on highways or the doors of public restrooms - only this one is a picture of a man standing up next to a commode with a line drawn through it. They are posted on the walls behind the toilets, on the doors, etc. etc.

As our friend was telling my husband and I, first there was shock (and on my part awe) and then, while my mouth stayed agape, the men collapsed into cave-man like noises that I'll assume were guffaws.

I imagined wearily that even in the Supreme Court, in the corridors of the pinnacle of all of our national education and wisdom, there are still janitors muttering at midnight about how you'd think if you're smart enough to have had the likes of Sandra on your high court, maybe you'd be smart enough to figure out a way not to pee all over the floor. But I digress. Or maybe I made my point too early.

On this whole topic I have become a mystic. (Read: my survival mechanism of choice.) Leaning down in our bathroom recently I noticed again an isolated, dried, yellow patch on the very base of the porcelain toilet.

In a moment of folly I mentioned my superstition, in light of the impossibility of it being there, to my husband. He went to great lengths to explain the prowess it took to pee standing up and the art form that is invariably involved. The bouncing, trajectories, and wall-usage only top physicists have mastered. He proudly promised to pass this unparalleled talent down on to our son.

I have to pause to say here that, yes, this is stretching the limits of 'Topics I Hope To Write About Some Day'  - but it is tied into my political convictions, so I hope you'll forgive me.

Our friend mentioned that after his host pointed out the directive on the wall in Germany he closed the bathroom door, looked around (no doubt for his mother), laughed uproariously and promptly stayed standing up.

Which got me to thinking about evolution. And the responsibility of womankind. In potty-training my son currently I am wondering if now is the time to begin a movement of teaching our men, one pee at a time, that they are not slaves to their anatomy. One has to start somewhere. I won't be handing out petitions, but I may begin at home.

And I will continue praying for a woman president. There are so many reasons we need one.