|
ARCHIVES
|
Forty Freaking Percent Posting Date: Apr 13 2008 11:42PM A new Ipsos-Gallop-SundayMonkey poll reports that 40 percent of North American adults have bladders the size of golf balls and brains no bigger.
I report this from seat 13C – the one right next to the “lavatory” on a Canadair Regional Jet 100. My flight is nearly completely full, but for the seat with defective seatbelts, so I am at the back of the bus with the other kids trying to avoid getting car sick. I can touch the door to the lavatory with my right elbow, which seems like an amusing fact as we take off. After all, this is a short flight – 90 minutes in the air – so how many of these people will need the john? Four? Seven?
I always plan ahead before flying to reduce the odds of needing the airborne toilet because frankly, it’s not the greatest experience. I’ve tried it in the business class section of a 747 and it sucked, so in this school bus with wings, I don’t need to poke my head into the head to tell you that there are good reasons to hold it until we land.
For one, I can tumble out of my seat into the pisser, but my cohorts have a bit of a journey. It starts with the obsessive monitoring of the inevitable line-up, watching that tiny little “occupied/vacant” sign, waiting for your opening. When you think you have it, you make your apologies to your seatmate, who, if you’re lucky, isn’t wearing eye shades or drinking a hot coffee during turbulence. Then you leap up, slamming your head on the overhead baggage compartment and causing enough shock and discomfort that you forget about your bladder and leak two drops of urine into your gitch.
Now you’re worried about seepage and the tell-tale crotch stain. Trying to hold your hands nonchalantly in front of your bits, you side-shuffle down the aisle, trying not show your crotch to anyone you might want to impress later, because everyone’s eyes are at the height of your privates. You end up twisting back and forth as you walk, bumping ass into shoulders and praying that the smell of tiny drips of urine isn’t wafting through the jet like a scarlet letter on your crotch.
At the lavatory door, urgency building like an ocean on a failing dike, you intuitively push against the door that has no handles to pull, but nothing happens. You push again. Nothing. It says “vacant.” Still won’t open. Super urgency.
Ah ha! You discover that it’s a pull door and all you have to do to get it open is hook your baby finger into a hole on the right half of the door while sliding your left foot into the opening to pull back on the door from behind.
Inside, all the controls look like they were made for Barbie’s dream camper. There are tiny levers all over and little male and female figures on things like the hot water tap, which is mildly confusing. The tiny little steel sink with its steel straw of a faucet reminds you of the spit bowl at your dentist, so your teeth start to hurt.
The entire time you’re inside the lavatory, you live in fear that you will accidentally press something that will a- squirt soap onto your pants, b- destroy cabin pressure or c- suck you into the high atmosphere through the poop chute.
The reality of course, is that none of these things is likely to happen, but no one fears the far more likely, which is sitting on the toilet – which has no seatbelt, remember – when the plane hits an air pocket, turning you into a ballistic object in the lavatory missle. You smash your head and die locked inside an airplane pisser with your pants around your ankles and good odds at being the lead story on CNN.
All of this makes me wonder why nineteen people – NINETEEN – or 40 percent of the occupants of this flight had to use the lavatory during a mere 90 minute flight. Next time, save yourselves the trouble and the potentially embarrassing death and just plan ahead – pee on the freaking ground. |
