Self Deprecation Will Set You Free

From the restroom at work.

Should you have all of that cheese, or maybe the bran muffin? You decide:

Not that this has come to mind on a regular basis by any stretch of the imagination, but when the bathroom nextdoor floods into your office the concept of licking the bottom of your shoes seems even less like something to do.

Where I work is in a small business park with small clumps of offices with each clump having its own courtyard and restroom shared among the offices in the clump. Once in a while, while in need of a urinal, I will be forced by the presence of another person, who currently is in need of a urnial but will soon not be in need of one, to use a stall for my urinal-based needs not for my stall-based needs. One particular time when my boarding pass for the urinal had been double-booked and I was given a standby seat in the stall, everything was proceeding as normal (which I’m sure relieves you almost as much as I was relieving myself).

That is when everything changed.

Out of my periferal vision I caught a glimpse of movement. My heart rate slowly increased. Small organs (ones that have no stops, keys, or pipes but still have the gumption to call themselves “organs”) were influencing my decision making skills with the devious addition of adrenalin to my blood stream. Fight or Flight…. my choice? Flight…. well, not exactly my choice. The motion was a fly making what appeared to be a bee-line (even thought it was a fly) for the bowl of the toilet.

My previously mentioned altered state of decision making tracked the fly in the air, a question was asked internally (and quietly, as the other guy was still standing at the Urinal I had had reservations for) and answered with exultation as I modified the trajectory of my stream to powerfully and acurately hose that fly directly into the toilet bowl.

Watch out for my ninja skills.

There is a website I visit that lets you rate movies, then based on these ratings it recommends movies for you to see. So two years ago I started going through the site and rating all the movies I’ve seen. Just moments ago I completed rating over 1,000 movies. Considering the average length of 90 minutes per movie, I have spent probably well over 1,501 hours of my life watching movies. I’m wondering if my bladder is getting back at me for all of the punishment I gave it by not wanting to leave the theater… damned stupid small bladder.

An hour ago I had a full bladder and was confronted with the restroom being closed on this floor in the building. There’s a restroom two floors below me, but I was unwilling to waste my energy. I just went downstairs two floors in search of something to drink with caffeine in it. A man has to have his priorities.

I’ve been trying to cut down on my caffeine intake, as it is quite out of hand. A small “pick me up” is 3 shots of espresso. A good indication of when it’s time to chill out, is when you have to use the restroom, and can tell you’ve had coffee.

Everyone’s done it, tilted their head a bit or even crouched down to see if there was someone in the stall in the bathroom. Someday I’m going to do the same… but to confuse everyone I’ll do it from inside the stall to see if there’s anyone out there.

It was ok before… maybe 20 years ago. But I just went to the restroom and a guy walked up to the urinal next to me. It has to have been at least 20 years since I’ve heard someone undo their velcro fly.