Awkwardness

As you might have guessed using your inferential powers on the blog title, this post is about awkward encounters in public or semi-public restrooms and not sports, sports, or baseball. Awkwardness, however, is a universal feeling, and the use of this life-saving information bears a direct relationship with the level of joy one associates with patronizing sports events. The following is a list of common scenarios and the precautions one should take. 1. Making eye contact with a friend, acquaintance or complete stranger through the cracks in the stall -- As anyone who has ever used a public or semi-public restroom before, most stalls are constructed so that on either side of the stall door, there is more or less an eighth of an inch of space between the door and the sides of the stall. It is obviously an American design - shoddy, thought up by a 7th-year senior at your favorite undergraduate institution, and something a frat boy would love to use to check out other dudes. Invariably, at some point between your trip from the urinal or stall to the sink, you will place yourself in the unenviable position of being able to see through those cracks. As you walk by, a slight movement or maybe a day-glo orange shirt catches your eye and you reflexively glance over. To you horror, you make eye contact with the person in the stall. The impact of such an encounter is so great that many people simply leave the bathroom without hitting the soap, water or paper towels. I think that's the case at least. 2. As a result, people in stalls should abide by several rules if the possibility of an encounter such as the one above presents itself: (a) Never start a conversation with someone in another stall or outside the stall; (b) Eyes down at all times. The magazine was invented for this very reason. If at a sporting event, a program will do; (c) No noises should be made unless they are involuntary. Every effort imaginable should be made to perform all noisy excretory functions amidst the ambient sounds of flushing toilets, running water, blowing hand dryers, or my personal favorite, painfully fake coughing fits; (d) If possible, stay in the stall until the other person leaves. 3. If you're lucky, the stalls might not even have doors due to the concern for vandalism or lack of funding, in which case, everyone is very simply, SOL, or in some cases, in heaven. 4. Another common problem, is where sinks, paper towel dispensers, and other things are way, way too close to the urinal. More great design. Unfortunately, this is serious and it is a lose-lose situation for everyone. When the only open urinal is two fee or less from the sink, on the same vertical plane, and someone (probably your boss) is just starting to wash his hands, but hopefully not his face, there really is no chance to avoid an awkward moment. Your only chance to minimize the painful aftershocks of such an encounter is to follow some simple rules: (a) Always use a stall or a downstream urinal if one is available; (b) If no stall is available, don’t wait for one. Instead of being greatful for not getting unwanted full frontal nudity, the person (probably your boss) at the sink will wonder why you are standing around in the men’s room. Ultimately, this will exponentially increase the awkwardness. To minimize or reduce the awkwardness level, proceed to the urinal very slowly, but do not proceed too slowly. Absolutely no eye contact is permitted beyond this point; (c) Angle your body away from the sink-user as best you can. Preferably, the angle will be between15 and 40 degrees, depending on your level of comfort. Warning: getting this step backwards could lead to poor ratings on your next performance review or getting a swirly at the ball game; (d) Try to act as normal as possible during the ordeal. Refrain from sighing or making other guttural sounds or the usual “Come on…” pep talk you like to give yourself; (e) When finished, you must remember this is one time you utilize the two shake rule. No matter how cool you think the sink-user is, don’t kid yourself, he’s counting. 5. In the event you are the sink-user, don’t kid yourself into thinking this is one of those situations where you can skip the hand-washing. While facing away from the urinal user (preferably at a 90 degree angle), sneak in your hand-washing. A good way to guarantee you are not front row fo’ tha sho’ is to keep your ear parallel to the sink drain. Getting this trick backwards, however, could turn out worse than I care to imagine. 6. Other general rules of usage: (a) Do not linger in or around the restroom; (b) Do not shower in the sink. Violating this rule will also be considered a violation of rule 6(a). Plus, no one likes to use a sink that is soaking wet. This means no face washing; (c) Keep conversation to a minimum; (d) If faced with the small urinal/big urinal conundrum, choose the small urinal; (e) If there are troughs, like those often seen at sporting events, do not squeeze into between two people unless there is as at least four feet of space between them. Also, aim as straight as possible, the last thing you want to do is sword fight with a total stranger; (f) No handshakes or man-hugs; (g) Do not bring your beer in; (h) Always wash your hands. It’s not that I believe in germs, it’s just a good symbolic gesture to let everyone know that you know what happens in there stays in there; (i) Take your materials with you. Sure, if you leave your copy of Cos-“bro”-politan in there, I’m gonna read it, but it makes me feel so dirty afterwards. (Note: If you find yourself helplessly without reading material and you have to take the Cosbro, leave it where you found it. There’s nothing worse than bumping into someone and having that moment where they realize where they’ve left that magazine they were looking for.); (j) Do not shit in the urinals; (k) Do not shit in the sink; (l) It’s your shit. You are responsible for it. If you get up and see some on the back of the seat, do the honorable thing. In my book if you leave some shit on the seat, that stalls off limits. Though I’d rather not, if everybody does this, then I will, of necessity, violate rules 3(j) or 3(k). Hopefully, if we all can abide by these rules, this unpleasant but necessary experience can be just a little less awkward and the world will be a much better place. If we address this now, we can prevent the government from intervening, thereby postponing the seemingly inevitable shit tax. All this typing about masking excretory functions with other sounds brought to mind the dreaded sneeze-fart or cough-fart. Intending to do the former, you unintentionally do the latter, and hilarity ensues. Any more discussion of this though will have to be in another post.

I write good

You'll soon find that this blog has multiple writers. I'm one of them. I write good. Damn good. I'll concentrate almost entirely on the Big 10, though for big sporting events, I'll offer my thoughts every now and then. I welcome questions and comments, unlike the other writers, who firmly believe they're smarter than you, the reader. Which they are. But since I'm borderline retarded, I'm not concerned about hearing your feedback.