The Bathroom Stall…

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The following story is definitely “toilet humor”. You’ve been warned; if you are of delicate sensibilities, you may not like it. If you enjoy funny, weird stories, this may be right up your alley.

Mom, that means you! I think it’s pretty cute and funny, but you always made bad faces at the dinner table if we told these kinds of stories…

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It had been a very, very long movie for five-year-old Zachariah Matthew Barnson; nearly three hours is pretty much his limit. As we stumbled out of the theater last winter where we’d just seen “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, Zach looked up at me with pitiful eyes and said “Dad, I really have to go to the bathroom!”

We pushed our way through the crowded lobby, watching male after male surge through the men’s room door. They all sported the famous look of concentration and disinterest on their faces that says “I’m going into a room where about a half-dozen strangers will be holding their private parts and urinating while staring at the wall. And I need to stand next to them and do the same.” Women are lucky. You always have stalls. Men are forced to stand three inches from enormously fat, smelly men on either side and pretend they don’t feel uncomfortable pulling out, erm, sensitive parts in full view. I mean, there are some concealing measures you can take, but they are at war with the “how long should I dig in my pants to give the impression I’m well-endowed?” reflex. If you try to be modest, you just know the guy next to you assumes he has a bigger one than you.

Women, I don’t intend to gross you out with that description. But, I mean, I need you to understand the kind of hostile environment men are in when they enter a full restroom. You’ve got this kind of discomfort, palpable in the room. Society thinks it is OK to have urinals without walls. And there are twenty men lounging around the middle of the room, eyeing one another and each one wondering “can I take that urinal that just freed up without ticking someone off?”. It’s rough!

Anyway, we pushed in with the rest of them. Wall-to-wall men. I mean, packed in so close, you sure hope one of the guys in a stand-up stall isn’t your friend, because if he waves at you he is sure to spray a neighbor.

So, Zach and I stood around for a few minutes, me trying to look like I don’t have to go myself while steadfastly avoiding looking other men in the room in the eye, him clutching his backside desperately in that kind of lip-curl, eyes-crossed, knees-knocking uncomfortable squirm which causes every adult in the room who isn’t his parent to try to get a little distance before the explosion.

We waited for a few minutes. Zach and I entertained one another with knock-knock jokes while we waited. It helped; he stopped the Potty Dance long enough to laugh before remembering how bad he had to go. And then…

Poof

The men’s room cleared out. I mean, it seemed like one minute, the place was filled to the point I’d have guessed a fire martial would have forced people out due to exceeding the room’s capacity — you know, the little note posted on the wall — and then, like BOOM, Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nobody else in the room. It was quiet, except for the steady “drip, drip, drip” of water trickling from the sink faucet someone failed to close completely.

“Well, Zach, looks like you can take your pick!” I told him, gesturing to the stalls. “I’ll just use one of the stand-up ones over here.”

Easier said than done.

I viewed the scene before me in dismay. Abused urinals stood rigidly against the wall, silent sentinels suffering in subjugation at the indignity of human excrement. One sported soap, quietly, slimily dripping from the handle. Who had washed their hands before using a urinal, I wondered. Urinals commonly feature a little "pee on me" plastic grille with a bar of deodorant in the middle. One seemed to have been pushed up the right-hand inside of the urinal as far as the curvature would allow it. Someone stuck their hand in there to move it? It appeared that several of the former users of the utilities had friends walk in and waved, for the evidence of shameful aiming abilities abounded. Finding a suitable urinal, I finally began to take care of business, without worry of timing on the pants-digging, nor care for perception of the nonexistent people on each shoulder.

BRRRRAAAPPPP!!! The singularly most resonant, full-featured, diarrheal gas-passing I had ever heard echoed through the empty, tiled men’s room.

Holy crap! I thought to myself. “Zach, was that you?” This was a singular explosion, worthy of a forty-year-old with irritable bowel syndrome.

From behind Zach’s stall door, I heard a quiet, tiny giggle. Imagine a shy five-year-old covering his mouth trying to stifle a laugh, and you’ll get the picture. He sounded so cute!

“Heh, that was a really good one, dude!” I shouted over my shoulder toward the stall door as I zipped up. “I bet you can’t do it again!”

FLOOSHFWUBWUBWUBWUB! An even more magnificent turd-toss followed the first. It sounded as if the small human in the stall had passed his own body weight on the second try.

“That was AMAZING, little guy! I give that one a nine out of ten,” I laughed as I sauntered nearer the stalls. “Come on, I bet you can beat your last one. That was totally impressive, dude.”

Another tiny giggle echoed from the chamber. He was probably doubled over in pain from this experience, and doubled over laughing at my comments. I warmed up to the game, noting how funny he thought the whole thing was.

FLUBNUBNUBWAPWAPWAP–SPLORSH! Obviously, he had hit his stride. “Aww, little dude, that was nothing. Eight and a half, tops!”

Zach’s tiny voice inside the stall said, “No, that was a nine.”

Several more gas-passings happened. I couldn’t believe the carrying capacity of his tiny little body. He must have been in dire need during the movie, and not willing to miss a minute of the movie to take care of business. We began ranking each fart, shouting “Seven!”, and then “Twelve!”, but the diarrheal noises gradually tapered off.

I briefly thought to myself, “What a special bonding moment between father and son. This is something we’ll remember forever.”

I was right.

I heard a toilet flush.

I heard a click from the stall next to Zach’s.

I watched a very large, forty+ year-old man step out, wink, and proclaim “Show’s over!” as he strode to the exit.

Yep, that’s a moment I’ll remember forever, all right!