If I could make one plea to "them" (whoever "they" are...you know, the ones who decide which spots are handicapped parking and decreed that shoes and a shirt are essential equipment when buying a snickers bar), it would be this:
PLEASE OUTLAW THE AUTOMATIC SELF-FLUSHING TOILET.
The automatic toilet provides neither extra comfort nor ease for the user. To illustrate this point, let me describe for you in detail my experience in the women's restroom in the C concourse at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Before you read further, be warned that even reading this from the comfort of your own home may cause you frustration and anxiety, and even a tenth of which the actual experience caused could drive a person to lash out uncontrollably toward public restroom fixtures everywhere.
The feeling is all too familiar...leg starts shaking, a little pressure in the lower stomach, trouble concentrating, then within ten minutes or so comes an absolute inability to think of anything else except finding a restroom. An airport is actually a fairly convenient place to experience these sensations, since restrooms are located at convenient intervals throughout each terminal. Although at times painful, the last leg of that walk toward the restroom once one is found is usually euphoric, in my opinion due to the anticipationof the feeling of relief that one is sure to attain in the immediate future.
There is no more welcomed sight to a person in the throes of bladder control than a row of bathroom stalls, all doors ajar. The austere, impersonal design of a public restroom has no effect whatsoever on the mood of the user, overcome with anticipation and hell-bent on unleashing the fury of Niagra Falls into Chicago's public waterways (add "number two" to this equation and the story gets a LOT more interesting, but in the interest of keeping this story rated PG, let's stick with "number one").
At roughly 1053 on June 25th, 2009 I found myself in this precise situation.
I duck quickly into one of the stalls. Third one from the wall since I like odd numbers. A quick glance at the toilet paper dispenser to confirm that my project will not be interrupted by the absence of a critical element. Check. As I begin to unzip my jumpsuit (yes, I am in my flight suit uniform since I am traveling on official orders for the Army), I bend slightly at the waist to inspect the toilet seat for any droplets of liquid. In a public restroom, it doesn't have to be yellow to be NOT ok, so all fluids must be eliminated from the seat surface before operations can commence. A tiny drop is visible. I grab a piece of TP and VERY carefully wipe the droplet away without touching any part of the seat and drop it in the bowl. I take off the top of my flight suit, careful not to let the sleeves fall below my waist and touch the floor. I tie them in a little knot and sort of tuck them down one leg of my suit, holding my knees apart a bit to keep the whole suit, now around my thighs, from dropping to my ankles and touching the floor. I grab a toilet seat cover and gingerly place it on the seat, making sure every centimeter is covered and there will be NO skin-to-plastic contact. Then I see it. The red blinking light on the wall directly above the commode! Oh no!! The toilet thinks that I sat down and stood up already!! When I bent over to cover the seat, the sensor could not differentiate between my forehead and my butt!! In a split second the seat cover is gone...sucked into oblivion with the quickness of those little vacuum tubes the drive-through bank uses. Ok, no problem, my pants are around my knees, now there are more drops on the seat from the recent flush, and I'm back at square one, only now I'm 90 seconds closer to a crisis bladder level. I grab another seat cover, this time approaching the toilet from the side, averting the heartless eye in the wall, praying it doesn't blink red. AH, success! I sit down on the seat, enjoying the clean, comforting feeling of crinkly paper between my cheeks and the plastic that who knows how many backsides have caressed. Then the climax of relief rushes over me as my bladder safely empties itself. As the flow comes to an end, and the anxiety leaves with the slow trickle, I lean forward with a sigh of relief, completely satisfied. In this moment of peace, I forget about the eye. My state of near-enlightenment is shattered by a click...followed by a hiss, and with only a fraction of a second to spare, jump up just in time to dodge the splashing drops created by the voracious vortex of the self-flushing toilet. The yellow water turns clear, and in an amazing stroke of luck, the seat cover has emerged the incident unscathed, and in the post-storm calm still protects the ivory rim. I sit down again, and pick up where I left off. Toilet paper. The manufacturer of industrial-sized toilet paper rolls has an internal communications problem. The department that decides how thick the paper should be is NOT talking to the department that decides how much paper goes on one roll (which would determine the amount of strength needed to pull a length of paper off of a full roll in a dispenser). The reason I know this is because the tensile strength of industrial toilet paper is only so very slightly LESS than the amount of tension required to spin the roll while it is in the dispenser. This unfortunate miscalculation results in a handful of three to four-inch shreds, obtained in an awkward process peppered with expletives, since the paper dispenser is always placed roughly 6 inches too far away to reach comfortably from a sitting position. As I begin to wipe with my handful of confetti, I am once again forced to perform an emergency egress from the seat because once again, the eye, in all its infinite wisdom, was unaware of my struggle with the toilet paper dispenser (becuase I had to lean over to reach it), and thought simply that I had completed my task and was ready to have my contributions whisked away. I manage to finish wiping, but alas, not in time to get the toilet paper into the toilet in time to go out to sea with that flush. After I toss it in, I carefully redress, amazed that I was somehow able to keep all parts of my flight suit uncontaminated, despite the rain dance I just did in a 4-foot by 6-foot stall. As I zip up, I realize that the last little bit of paper is still in the toilet, which is no problem, because I can just wave my hand in front of the eye and it will flush right down. Wave. Wave again. WAVE HARDER. Are you kidding me? Nothing!! I reluctantly push the small black button and flush the toilet the old fashioned way, like God intended, by the strength of my own hand!
So in closing, I guess my point is this: in my opinion, the self-flushing toilet is quite possibly the greatest insult to modern human intelligence. This is the message that the creators of this pillar of cleanliness and convenience send to me: By putting toilets in public restrooms, we assume that you have the wherewithall to get yourself to a place where you can relieve yourself safely, but we do NOT think you can be relied on to flush the toilet on your own.
In the meantime, the toilet flushes about 4 times per person...that's a waste of water!
Next time: The anguish of automatic faucets...standing in front of a sink waving your soapy hands around like an idiot looking for the sweet spot so the sensor will turn the water on.
