Oh how I used to love the man-throne. I loved the comfort of slamming my pants down to the ground, situating my overly white-ass on the porcelain and just knowing for the next 10 minutes (give or take an hour) I was gonna be free of any/all responsibilities, chores, conversations…you name it.
When I was a teenager I was a huge fanatic of dipping (yeah, the sexy tobacco habit where you tuck some Copenhagen awesomeness in your lower lip) and of Mario on Game Boy. I’d sit in the bathroom for close to an hour, dipping and playing Mario.
Oh…I definitely didn’t have to poop…I was just camped out avoiding reality and enjoying every damn minute.
Then came college where the toilet was the only place you had enough time to knock out a solo masturbatory quickie. You sure as hell couldn’t do it with the roommate in the room. Showers were a free-for-all for pranks. If you made it through an entire shower without getting cold water dumped on you, attacked by garbage, or your hot water being cut off…well you were the man. Obviously the showers were no place to try and “take care of business.”
So the shitter became the go-to place to knock one out.
Then you get married…and there’s the first few awkward times where you know you’re about to peel some paint off the walls with colon fumes, but you just can’t do it while the new lady-friend was in the house.
The wifey never had that problem. I remember one of the first nights we first lived together I was walking towards the bathroom to pee and there she was, door open, perched on her throne, reading a magazine, relaxed as hell, and all “I’ll be done in a few more minutes. Can you wait?” like it was nothing. A part of me died that day.
Then we had kids. And I swore, I’d never share a bathroom with my kids. And for a while I didn’t have to…till we moved to the urban life that is Chi-Town. Three bedroom house, one bathroom…and that one bathroom has no lock on the door.
It’s inevitable—whenever I need to do my business, a small, embedded microchip goes off in the kids’ brains and bladders and says “hey little bastards listen…I know you’re all watching SpongeBob and having a good time and stuff, but your dad’s on the shitter. We’re moving into Code Brown mode now kids…get up, go pound that bathroom door like you mean it and make your old man cry!”
I’ll stand at the top of the stairs, “anyone need to use the bathroom.”
“Nope – I’m good dad,” the boy will scream.
“Nnnnooooo!!!,” the daughter will echo.
Two minutes later…at least one of them is doing the “pee pee dance” outside the bathroom door explaining how they’re about to pee themselves and everything within a 10 foot radius.
By the time I’m able to enjoy the solitude of the porcelain gods again I’m pretty damn confident it still won’t be on my own. It’ll be my wife having to lift me, place me on the toilet, then stand their disgustedly tapping her foot and asking “are you done yet?”
And I’ll do my doody duty and remember back to when I was a young buck and hearing her mutter the words “are you done yet?” was for an entirely different reason.
