What a 💩 storm!🤣. So sorry about your pretty toilet. I’m sympathizing to the point of belly laughing at both the pooping & the plumbing. We’ve had nightmares w both. I just spent the first 3 days of my vacation sick….yep! IBS backup from traveling, & well, not “taking nature’s call”. Just got home, & will probably be in the same boat by tomorrow. Maybe our BODIES should have PEX plumbing?🤣
We lived in one of the former Soviet republics for several years and at service stations, parks, and internal airline flights, I always wondered how the last 30 people used any given bog, sometimes basing my observations only upon seeing the shoe prints in front of the facility. On the BabyFlot airlines, I have watched in horror as biohazard oozed down the carpet from the front Tupelov bog up in Comrade Class. I often thought of buying and wearing a biohazard suit on those flights, but settled with long, hot showers and a lot of Purell.
Once, up on St Bernard Pass in Switzerland, I was suffering from a g.i. bug who took up residence while I was in Africa a few days earlier. The rest area facility was gendered, but without partitions. The porcelain squat toilets had a bomb bay between two inverted footprints one “stood” on during defueling. During my time of trouble, as I swayed back and forth while maintaining my balance on the raised footprints over the drop zone, the door slammed open and a large red headed cleaning woman pushed her mop bucket in and setup office with me in my misery in plain view. Apparently I was unremarkable, because she continued whistling some Italian love song without a pause.
In the men’s room at an upscale hotel in Dublin, I was surprised to find a woman handing out bog roll to patrons as required. I asked a friend later if it was a common practice in Ireland. “What? Bog wenches? Yes.” I only repeat what I was told.
In a Southern African country where we lived, the only available toilet paper was locally made and was similar to newspaper except that wood fibers were still visible, which was worrisome for beginners. We referred to the product as the John Wayne brand: it was rough, it was tough, and it would take crap off nobody.
During a technical training session we were conducting at a central Ghana junior college, I heard the call of nature and made my way to the gents. The school was fairly new, but alas, the plumbing, he was buggered. A battalion-sized tile urinal had a plugged drain, so an enterprising maintenance man chiseled a hole through an outside wall and the urinal drained down into a courtyard along a wall that I came to refer to as the green wall of death. While attending to my needs, the door slammed open (I have witnessed more doors slamming open than closed) and in strolled an 18 stone market woman who through a remarkable feat of dexterity relieved herself at the same urinal where I stood in wide eyed amazement.
Wow…I know what you mean about pooping where you are comfortable. I don’t like to share rooms with less familiar people because of this issue with sharing a bathroom. It is not gender specific but relative to comfort level with the person. But everyone poops….i remember sharing a house with five other working adults just after college…and we had one bathroom…..need I say more….
I replaced the master toilet in my condo with a medium-profile style because these old knees have a difficult time on the regular-sized (low-profile) ones; like just about all the ones at work.
This one is my very favorite; also because it is a water-saver type that flushes with some sort of jet action (ka-woosh and all gone). When I replaced my bathtub with a walk-in shower (the knees again), I had them put in an extra grab-bar conveniently located for assistance in standing up again.
If necessary, I can use the toilets at work, but it takes some certain acrobatics to stand back up.
So sorry about the plumbing calamity but laughing all the way through your presentation of it! Have you seen the retail toilet displays that brag about how many tennis balls will fit down the commode in one flush? I stood shopping for a new fixture a year or so ago, staring at the tennis ball pronouncements and wondering just what sort of diet those marketers had, to think there was any similarity. 🫣
I think about the young children in my life and their experiences using the toilet and not knowing (up to a point) that there is any shame around it. The older children (7) want privacy now, but the younger one (4) does his business quite uniquely and with pride! I guess sometime between ages four and seven is when there's the equivalent of Eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and becoming aware. It's bittersweet that one day the four year old will ask for privacy, too.
What a 💩 storm!🤣. So sorry about your pretty toilet. I’m sympathizing to the point of belly laughing at both the pooping & the plumbing. We’ve had nightmares w both. I just spent the first 3 days of my vacation sick….yep! IBS backup from traveling, & well, not “taking nature’s call”. Just got home, & will probably be in the same boat by tomorrow. Maybe our BODIES should have PEX plumbing?🤣
An odyssey. Wow! So much work.
A few anecdotes, though not amusing at the time:
We lived in one of the former Soviet republics for several years and at service stations, parks, and internal airline flights, I always wondered how the last 30 people used any given bog, sometimes basing my observations only upon seeing the shoe prints in front of the facility. On the BabyFlot airlines, I have watched in horror as biohazard oozed down the carpet from the front Tupelov bog up in Comrade Class. I often thought of buying and wearing a biohazard suit on those flights, but settled with long, hot showers and a lot of Purell.
Once, up on St Bernard Pass in Switzerland, I was suffering from a g.i. bug who took up residence while I was in Africa a few days earlier. The rest area facility was gendered, but without partitions. The porcelain squat toilets had a bomb bay between two inverted footprints one “stood” on during defueling. During my time of trouble, as I swayed back and forth while maintaining my balance on the raised footprints over the drop zone, the door slammed open and a large red headed cleaning woman pushed her mop bucket in and setup office with me in my misery in plain view. Apparently I was unremarkable, because she continued whistling some Italian love song without a pause.
In the men’s room at an upscale hotel in Dublin, I was surprised to find a woman handing out bog roll to patrons as required. I asked a friend later if it was a common practice in Ireland. “What? Bog wenches? Yes.” I only repeat what I was told.
In a Southern African country where we lived, the only available toilet paper was locally made and was similar to newspaper except that wood fibers were still visible, which was worrisome for beginners. We referred to the product as the John Wayne brand: it was rough, it was tough, and it would take crap off nobody.
During a technical training session we were conducting at a central Ghana junior college, I heard the call of nature and made my way to the gents. The school was fairly new, but alas, the plumbing, he was buggered. A battalion-sized tile urinal had a plugged drain, so an enterprising maintenance man chiseled a hole through an outside wall and the urinal drained down into a courtyard along a wall that I came to refer to as the green wall of death. While attending to my needs, the door slammed open (I have witnessed more doors slamming open than closed) and in strolled an 18 stone market woman who through a remarkable feat of dexterity relieved herself at the same urinal where I stood in wide eyed amazement.
I could continue, but I need to go.
Wow…I know what you mean about pooping where you are comfortable. I don’t like to share rooms with less familiar people because of this issue with sharing a bathroom. It is not gender specific but relative to comfort level with the person. But everyone poops….i remember sharing a house with five other working adults just after college…and we had one bathroom…..need I say more….
I replaced the master toilet in my condo with a medium-profile style because these old knees have a difficult time on the regular-sized (low-profile) ones; like just about all the ones at work.
This one is my very favorite; also because it is a water-saver type that flushes with some sort of jet action (ka-woosh and all gone). When I replaced my bathtub with a walk-in shower (the knees again), I had them put in an extra grab-bar conveniently located for assistance in standing up again.
If necessary, I can use the toilets at work, but it takes some certain acrobatics to stand back up.
So sorry about the plumbing calamity but laughing all the way through your presentation of it! Have you seen the retail toilet displays that brag about how many tennis balls will fit down the commode in one flush? I stood shopping for a new fixture a year or so ago, staring at the tennis ball pronouncements and wondering just what sort of diet those marketers had, to think there was any similarity. 🫣
I think about the young children in my life and their experiences using the toilet and not knowing (up to a point) that there is any shame around it. The older children (7) want privacy now, but the younger one (4) does his business quite uniquely and with pride! I guess sometime between ages four and seven is when there's the equivalent of Eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and becoming aware. It's bittersweet that one day the four year old will ask for privacy, too.