There are certain things that I will never understand, despite being able to take apart an engine and rebuild it with extra parts to spare. Actually, I can take practically anything apart, put it back together, and have parts left over every time. But I digress.
The confusing subject of this diatribe is the bathroom. You wouldn’t know that from the title, but bear with me please. Sometimes it takes a while to get these things out.
I am not a complete idiot (I am a partial idiot.) I know what the general purpose of the bathroom is. I’m not entirely sure why it is called a bathroom, since we more often use it for other things. Showerroom? I suppose it sounds better than the peeroom.
It was done in the peeroom, with a wet towel, by Miss Scarlet.
That should keep you thinking for a while. Anyway, distraction is not the intent of this blog, despite the fact that I am easily distracted.
I suppose I should qualify my subject (I don’t know why, but I will do so anyway since it is my blog and I can clarify if I want to.) I am talking about bathrooms that have a definitive female personality. You know the kind I am talking about. I am not talking about the port-a-potty at the job site. I understand those. They make sense, even if they don’t always smell good.
I am talking about restroom facilities with ambience. These are facilities with household items that do not belong in a bathroom.
I can’t bring myself to call it a powder room. I have not—will not—put powder on in a bathroom, or any other room for that matter.
There are candles. Since Thomas Edison shocked the world (and himself,) there is no good reason why there should be candles in a bathroom. Especially if they are lit. And, especially if I burn myself on them. And don’t even get me started if they are scented.
I once went to the bathroom and ate half a bowl of something called potpourri. I thought it was a trail mix or something like that.
There are often little carved soaps. I can’t count the times I have been berated for washing my hands using the little decorative soaps the hostess displays. Why are they there if I can’t use them? Who decorates with soap anyway? They look like individual, personalized soaps. I came out of the bathroom, and I told the next guy going in, “don’t use the rose. That’s mine!”
This past holiday season, I had the opportunity—well, several times—to use the facilities at a party I attended. For some unknown reason—unknown at least to me—there was a birdcage hanging in the corner. I looked and the bird seemed a little under the weather. I felt sorry for him—or her since I can’t tell the difference without lifting their feathers—so I offered Tweety an hors d’oeuvre. (Despite what it might taste like, there is no hors meat in them.) It was a little piece of crap—I think they call them water chestnuts—wrapped in bacon. I have a few others in my pocket for later.
Well, I shoved the treat in his face, and he fell dead. I mean he dropped off his perch to the bottom of the cage. I killed him. Maybe it wasn’t a water chestnut. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten a plate full of them—although that would help explain why I was back in the pooproom again.
I tried to revive him. I tried to give him mouth to beak, but I think I blew too hard. He shot away like a deflating balloon. I used CPR, but his little body just crunched under my fist. I think I pressed too hard. His beak fell off.
Thar she blows!
So there I stood with the hostess’s dead pet, in front of the toilet. Well, what would you do? I flushed the little bugger and went about my business, hoping that it wasn’t the water chestnut or a piece of bad bacon that did him in.
Back at the party, I pulled my wife aside, and I told her what had happened. If I keeled over and my nose fell off, I wanted her to know it was the hors d’oeuvre. I also did this because sooner or later they would go to feed Polly a cracker or a poisoned water chestnut and discover that she (or he—I forgot to look before I flushed) was gone, and I knew from experience I would be blamed.
My wife told me that the birdcage was a decoration. It was a fake bird.
Did I feel like a partial idiot or what? I spent five minutes doing mouth-to-beak and chest compressions on that feathered bag of sawdust. (It did, though, explain the after-taste in my mouth. I had always thought that parakeet would taste like chicken.)
I was glad the bird wasn’t real. I wasn’t too keen on handling a dead bird after all, and I had a hard time washing my hands after the funeral. I couldn’t get the soap to lather at all. I figured it must have been due to hard water.
“That was the hand lotion,” my wife said.
I should have stuck to the decorative soaps.
theeyelife 