Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – submitted by Rory McRandall

Sept 28, 2006

I am proud to announce our newest writer, Rory McRandall becomes writer #361 for Storytime Tapestry.  Please welcome him and comment on his delightful tale.

The Worst Public Washroom In The World

by

Rory McRandall

I'm not normally a picky person, though I do have my standards. When it comes to using a public washroom I'm not exactly a fanatic for sparkling cleanliness, but there is a level of filth beyond which I, normally, will not condescend to use the facility.

As the old saying goes, however, any port in a storm.

On a fine summer's day I found myself at a rustic summer camp, where I'd come to discuss alternative educational opportunities with a group of troubled, inner city teens who'd been enjoying a country reprieve courtesy of the United Church.

The camp was an attractive, if not too well appointed, site. The dozen or so cabins the youths occupied were rustic but well maintained. The old farmhouse that served as the dining hall and central gathering place was renovated to accommodate its current usage and had a functional but well-used look to it.

The showpiece of the entire place was the hall which had the advantage of being many years newer than the rest of the place. It was in the hall where I had given my brief talk, presented my copious quantities of hand-outs and fielded their many questions ranging from the unusual to the bizarre.

When my presentation was over and I'd finished chatting with the camp's still youthful and attractive though middle-aged female director, I discovered that I had an urgent need to use a washroom. Now this being a summer camp, complete with plenty of wooded areas, and I being a man, it might have been the simplest thing in the world to just choose a tree anywhere and let fly. However, my need was such that I would absolutely require a place to sit down and relieve myself.

I was almost resigned to the probability of having to use one of the outhouses that were neatly tucked here and there around the property. I don't like outhouses. They uniformly smell bad, have functional features that tend to be, on the whole, inadequate and provide a generally unsatisfactory bathroom experience.

So, I was delighted to find that there was a washroom at the back of the hall where I'd given my lecture. In spite of the fact that this contained one of the few flush toilets in the whole camp, I was surprised to find that it was unoccupied.

One step into the room, not much larger than your average closet, gave me a clue as to why it was not in use. It was clearly hardly ever in use. The collection of spider's webs that occupied each corner at the ceiling, almost the entire window frame and the area behind the toilet tank were something to put your widowed Uncle Amos's attic to shame. The floor had layers of dirt on it that reduced any attempt to determine its original colour to mere guesswork. The room was small enough that I could touch all four walls from the centre. There was a remarkably tiny sink occupying one wall and opposite that was where the actual toilet was.

Ah, the toilet!

The bowl was an interesting display of years of use with only intermittent and half-hearted attempts at cleaning. The seat, which I found in the upright position, looked like a veritable germ factory. So uninviting was the whole thing that I gave a moment's thought to retreating in favour of one of the outhouses. However, the nearest privy that I knew of was at least 75 yards away from the hall and, so great was my need at this point, I was unsure I could manage the trek with dignity intact.

There were two rolls of toilet paper sitting on the window ledge. One was down to less than a quarter of its original size and the other was being used to prop open the window (to which I could probably credit, along with chronic underusage, the fact that the room was not very smelly in spite of its appearance) and had a damp look to it.

I grabbed the smaller roll and wound several layers of paper around one hand. With this paper I undertook a rapid but thorough wiping of every millimeter of that seat as well as the rim of the bowl itself.

Satisfied that I could now plunk my naked posterior onto the seat without overwhelming terror at the prospect of imminent infection, I began to loosen my belt and trousers.

Before dropping my pants I had to pause and reconsider the condition of the floor. Not only was is all kinds of filthy, but there was a suggestion of dampness about it. I decided that if I were to allow my pants to simply drop to my ankles they would acquire visibly disgusting stains in odd places. The only way I could see to avoid this fate was to remove them entirely and hang them on the hook conveniently placed on the inside of the door. To do this I would have to remove my shoes. Going shoeless on that floor would damn my socks to the same fate that I sought to avoid for the slacks. Clearly I would have to remove all articles of clothing from my lower body. Sure, my bare feet would suffer the worst hazards the floor had to offer, but feet could always be washed later, I reasoned.

So, pants and underwear hanging from the door hook, socks tucked neatly into shoes which were set aside in the 'cleanest' of the corners, I settled down to my business.

Bodily functions have an urgency that demands they be met. No matter the circumstances leading up to the moment, when one actually arrives at the point in time where such an urgent demand is finally met the relief that descends is joyous and profoundly satisfying. I knew such rapture at that moment.

My business complete, I craned my neck to peer over my shoulder at the top of the toilet tank, where I had left the smaller roll of paper after using it to wipe the seat. To my surprise it was not there. A quick glance around led me to a sight that both startled and alarmed me. The roll, what was left of it, was actually travelling up the wall of the bathroom!

For the briefest instant I thought I was witnessing a supernatural event. Then the realization of the more dismaying truth dawned upon me: the roll was actually being purloined by one of the architects of the copious webbing that dominated the room. I could not actually see the arachnid whose Herculean physique made such a feat possible, hidden as it was by the roll itself, and I am thankful for that one small grace. No doubt such a vision would haunt my dreams even now had I beheld it.

The only choice left to me was the damp roll now holding the window opened. I reached up overhead, as the window ledge was at least a foot above where my head was as I sat on the toilet. The dampness of the roll was a little more entrenched than I had anticipated, but I was well past the point of being choosy. The paper was barely intact and had none of its manufactured strength. This made for a messy and awkward task of completing my hygenic chores. Nonetheless, complete them I did.

Finally, and gratefully, rising from the seat I reached back and depressed the lever to flush the toilet. The water from the tank began to fill the bowl, swirling its contents in that familiar, hypnotic way to which all modern users of such conveniences have become accustomed. However, there was no whirlpool developing to suck said contents down into the pipes beneath the floor and away to locations best not pondered upon. The water level in the bowl was rising alarmingly towards the lip of the bowl.

I stood there, naked from the waste down, staring in abject horror at the contents of the toilet as they inched their way up the wall of the bowl towards disaster. Clearly I had no time to put my underwear, pants, socks and shoes on before those fetid contents came rushing over the top of the bowl to inundate the floor. I could not imagine myself bursting out into the hallway bare-assed to the unadultered hilarity that any passing campers would surely give in to.

My choices were, to say the least, limited.

I quickly leaned my back against one wall and propped my feet up on the opposite wall, thus raising every part of my body off of the floor only a fraction of a second before the rank water gushed over the top of the bowl and spread its evil putrefaction across its breadth.

Now I was in a pickle!

Propped painfully between the two walls, scrunched up like a commuter trying to sleep on a train's coach seat and already sweating profusely from the strain of maintaining that position against the persistent tug of gravity it was at this moment that I became aware of the webs that were dangling on the top of my head.

Images of ghastly, monstrous spiders popped unbidden into my beleagured mind.

Clearly I had to find a way out of my predicament. The fact that my weight was being supported by my back and feet meant that my hands were somewhat free, though limited in their range of motion.

I was able to reach the hook where my garments hung. I grabbed my underwear and managed, one foot at a time, to get them onto my legs and, with great effort and difficulty, shimy them up to their accustomed position.

The pants were much more difficult. Twice I almost dropped them into the pool of septic waste on the floor below and once I almost lost my perch on the walls entirely, which would have been a catastrophe of Biblical proportion.

Finally, I managed to have my pants securely fastened but I was still stuck in an increasingly painful position and my shoes and socks were down there on the befouled floor.

Words to describe the gyrations and contortions that I effected to extract myself from that position are beyond my command of the language. Suffice it to say that the sink, window ledge and top of the toilet tank were all involved in these slow-motion gymnastics. I managed to get the door open and project myself out to a landing spot free of the mess I was keen to avoid. From there I was able to reach in and retrieve my fouled shoes and, thankfully, unadulterated socks.

I would find another option for washing my hands. Anything short of a lifesaving emergency would be too little motivation to get me to re-enter that prison cell.

Needless to say, I left the campsite without further interaction with any of its denizens. The thought of someone having to discover and address the disaster I left behind me was unsettling, but at least partially mollified by the thought that no one had bothered to post any warnings about the inadequacies of the facilities themselves.

In the intervening years, curiously, no one has asked me to return to the camp to again address their charges.

Rory McRandall

rorymcrandall@yahoo.ca  

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity. ~ Arthur J. Balfour