186. Urine Trouble
Bathrooms are the Water Temple of social anxiety. That’s a Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (1998) reference and trust me it’s very, very funny. On point though, public bathrooms, locker rooms, and other loci of excreta have always been challenging locations when my social anxiety is at its highest. I don’t want to learn about others in these quarters, I feel no need to reach out to anything but my self.
One time, as a new employee, I went to the bathroom adjacent to where I was being onboarded. The CEO came bounding in, loudly announcing himself and patting other urinators on the back. He then proceeded to let go of his liquid waste hands-free while holding a power pose and whistling. It dawned on me that that’s probably why he was the CEO. He had conquered the bathroom. Surely the people who hired him could tell this is a person who can pee while loudly talking about the weather! “He’s going places”, they must've said to themselves!
Extra panel:
Listen, I know it’s a shitty extra panel, but honestly... do you realize how hard it is to come up with these while the United States of America is going through a mid-life crisis? All I could come up with was a stereotypical Irish cop joke.
Fine, I also came up with this next one, which is equally crappy and derivative. I never said I could be original or witty, this is just therapeutic for me. You try being an accountant or something and somehow decide you can make people laugh through comics when you can neither write nor draw. No seriously, try it, it's been a blast!
No one knows restroom anxiety like a custodian. I've seen toilets with runny poop stuffed with toilet paper, sometimes a whole roll or two, in Michigan, Florida and an American base in Scotland, (no evidence from actual Scotts). At the tent and trailer park where I lived in Florida for a while, someone literally tore one of the restrooms apart. Graffiti is everywhere, mostly the same raw drawings of female anatomy and dicks. It is awkward to stand next to a man with his dick out, pouring water like a firefighter, while I stand there trying to free up the pee valve, hoping he will not think of me as the neurotic I was. Once at Disney World, where I worked two of nine years as a "Custodial Host," I was in a restroom when a man farted super loudly, and a kid exclaimed "Oooo, gross!" I thought, what is with this kid? Where is a more proper place to honk a horn like that than the restroom? My old and now dead friend Brian told me about working at WKZO when it was "The Fetzer Broadcasting Company," when Mr. Fetzer came in and took a seat. He would flush the toilet and plop plop, flush the toilet and plop plop, flush the toilet and plop plop, etc. Wouldn't he be mortified if he ever knew I would be writing this story decades after his death. "It dawned on me that that’s probably why he was the CEO. He had conquered the bathroom." Many a truth is said in jest, so it's said. Restrooms are silent places where you can hear a pea drop. They are probably the worst places for people to gather together and excrete waste products.
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