Strude

Yesterday, one of the building’s maintenance guys was working on the leaky pipe in the restroom, causing me to go upstairs to drain the main vein. My company has the entire first floor, while the second floor has a few different companies thus making that restroom public domain. Still, whenever I use this restroom, I feel like I am trespassing.

As I entered this upstairs bathroom the other day I heard voices. I almost turned around and walked out. I hate an audience whilst tapping a kidney. Besides, I don’t get to adjust the stream, hitting different areas in the urinal causing different tones. My urine and I make such beautiful music.

The only thing that kept me from turning around and leaving was they probably saw the door open. After all, they were talking. And all men know that you don’t talk in the john. If you absolutely have to talk, the only time you do it is when both parties are washing their hands, or better yet, when they are drying their hands and are on the way out the door. So, putting 2 and 2 together, I figured the talkers were on their way out meaning: 1) they would soon be in the hall and see that it was me who opened the door and 2) if they left I could pee in musical peace. So, I continued in.

Imagine my horror when I walked in to find one guy taking a dump, and the other guy standing right in front of the first guy’s stall door. So many things were wrong with this scene. First of all, the positioning. Who the crap stands right in front of another dude’s stall? The smell alone should be reason enough to stand back. And how can the guy on the throne let anything move on through while some other guy’s toes are crossing the line?

Second, they were talking. Between all the grunts, groans and splashes, THEY WERE TALKING. I’m sorry, didn’t it say Men’s Room on the door? What kind of self respecting, penis owning, testicle scratching man carries on a conversation amidst the plops of poo? This was unbelievable. I literally scurried to a urinal and pushed as hard as I could - without risking striping my shorts - to get the urine out as fast as possible so I could escape this scene.

It was an extremely uncomfortable moment that stretched on through the ages during which I was treated to the following:

Standing Guy: (checking his BlackBerry) Whoa, they got a new flavor of Absolute. [He was surfing the net for liquor, apparently.]

Crapping Guy: Cool.

Standing Guy: Hey and it’s on sale.

Crapping Guy: You remember that girl at the liquor store in St. George?

Standing Guy: Oh, Yeah.

Crapping Guy: She was hot.

Standing Guy: Yeah.

I kid you not. I was afraid I was going to start laughing, and then I realized, “Nope. I’m too scared to laugh.” Still, I shot out of there like my hemorrhoids were on fire.

I am still shaken today.

While standing in front of the incredibly weak microwave ovens in my break room heating up my tasty Hungry Man meal, I overheard two co-workers discussing the obituaries found in the local paper.

“Wow, she was pretty when she was younger. Look.”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t turn out so good, but she used to be pretty.”

“I don’t think I want my family to put a younger picture of me. I don’t want people saying, ‘What happened to her?’”

“Whoa, her parents are still alive?”

“Really? How old was she?”

“93.”

“And her parents are still alive? How old are they?”

“They gotta be in their hundreds.”

“And they’re still alive?”

“Yeah, listen.” She then reads from the obituary. “[She] was preceded in death by her husband, son-in-law, and parents.”

Where do I start?

I have seen this weird phenomenon several times over the past few weeks.

On my own license plate, I have 3 stickers for the purpose of registration.  One for the county in which the vehicle is registered, one for the month in which it was registered, and of course the third sticker is for the year.  Now, every year when I renew the registration, I just put the new year’s sticker over the past year’s sticker.

However, I have seen several cars on the road who are placing the new year’s sticker next to the old one.  Two had years ‘04 through ‘08 stretching across the top of the plate.  One more year and they are going to have to start a second line.

What is the point of this?  Is it some sort of bragging right?  Do you think a cop is going to be more lenient if he pulls you over?  “Oh, I see, not only are you registered this year, but you’ve been registered for five years straight.  I’ll just give you a warning then.”

I don’t get it.

When two of your buddies have to help you on to the ATV, that should have been your first clue that you shouldn’t be driving it. Or maybe the first clue should have been that you were legally blind… and drunk.

“When the men put Mr. Hoyle on there…”

So, there I was, eating my lunch, minding my own business when I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation a table away. One lady was going on about the trials and travails of going on vacation with her dog.

I still don’t get you overboard, pets-are-humans, animal lovers. You don’t need to dress them up. You don’t need to take pictures of new born puppies and pass them around the break room while acting like you had just spent 18 hours at the hospital as your daughter gave birth. Pets are not your kids. If you think owning an animal is anything close to having a kid, then you need to be smacked upside the head.

And you sure don’t need to take them on vacation with you!

This lady went on and on about the difficulties of finding hotels that accepted pets, and then once she and hubby had found some pet accepting hotels they were still disappointed to find that these hotels had a pet size limit.

“No pets over 50 pounds,” she said. “What does it matter?”

What does it matter? 50 pound animals leave behind 50-pound-animal-size piles of crap. When I come across a steaming pile of poo so large that there is a possibility it could have come from the fat, white guy in the room next to mine, then let me tell you something: size definitely matters.