Do you have a favourite toilet?

The number of page hits that certain blog posts get on this website would suggest that Thought Leader readers like to read about the government, politics and how everything is going wrong, wrong, wrong with the ANC. You, the reader, want to discuss Zuma, Malema and those okes. Well, terribly sorry to disappoint. This isn’t one of those posts. I’m sure someone else will oblige. Heaven knows we never run out of material. Between the ANC, the communists, Helen Zille and the trade unions, the sackcloth and ashes never lay long in the closet.

Speaking of material, when I heard last week that President Jacob Zuma was going to take on yet another wife, I got an idea for a blog post. It would have been a satirical piece, hayibo.com like. I had it all in my mind. “President Jacob Zuma has pledged to end strife and racial divides in South Africa by marrying the entire country. According to the president, since he loves all his wives and children equally, people in South Africa would be truly equal for the first time ever.” Something like that. But after a week of procrastination, the moment has passed. Writing it now would be about as pointless as writing a satirical Hansie Cronje eulogy. Pity, it could have been quite good.

Now it must be stressed at this point that the rest of this blog post is going to be somewhat lavatorial. The title would have alerted you to that. I’m not sorry for that. See, I don’t understand why people have got to be so bashful when the subject of toilets and what goes on in them gets raised. Bowel movements are natural and very necessary. They’re as commonplace as sneezing, albeit more messy. It’s really not that weird. You do it as well. But thanks to the understanding that the subject of poo should never be raised in polite company, we all act as if we don’t ever cook some fudge. Grow a tail. Sink the Bismarck. Release the hounds, you know. In your lifetime, you will spend anything between 700 and 2000 hours on the john. Honestly, are we going to pretend that a large chunk of our lives simply doesn’t exist? Ridiculous. I aim to rectify that. Let’s talk about the bog, shall we?

I can safely assume that the common-or-garden porcelain bowl is your toilet of choice. You wouldn’t choose squatting over a pit over a nice, clean and very cold porcelain bowl. Not unless you’re “special”. I don’t believe I have a large following in Japan so we can also assume that your necessarium doesn’t look like the captain’s seat on the Starship Enterprise. It doesn’t warm itself up, or soothe your straining bottom with warm water. It doesn’t play you Josh Groban songs. It just does its job, grimly and efficiently.

Loo time is you time, so it’s always fascinating to see what people put in their private toilets to pass the time whilst answering the call of nature. I don’t go with the obligatory magazines. For me, reading is an intense experience, it removes me completely from the present and deposits me wherever it is the author wants me to go. I’ve often snapped out of my reading trance only to find that I’d not satisfied my purge urge, despite having been on the pot for 20 minutes. So reading fails entirely. What I have on the bathroom door, facing the throne is a calendar. A simple, unassuming calendar. When I’m on the bog, I’m busy planning my week. Don’t tell me I don’t multi-task.

Your own privy probably has a ready supply of your favourite toilet paper. Surely you use the friendly 2-ply with the cute puppies on it? I can’t imagine why anyone would willingly suffer the indignity and shame of single-ply bog rolls. And 3-ply seems to be overdoing it a bit. 2-ply is the discerning man’s choice of lavatory paper.

The problems start when you find yourself at the mall, the service station or restaurant. Those toilets are a massive gamble, you simply don’t know what you might find. Excellent service, good food and delightful conversation will be ruined should you find that the restaurant toilets are a trial. Now, I don’t think it’s sexist of me to point out that it’s usually the ladies who have a massive problem with sub-par bathrooms. Many a man has expressed his enormous surprise when his spouse knowingly chose a restaurant with lesser food or service, simply because their toilets having locking doors. Also, on the matter of public toilets, I do wish proprietors would stop it with the fancy and difficult toilets signs. I remember on a certain day I went to a certain establishment, which shall remain nameless, to watch a football match. I suddenly found myself needing to go, but it was ten minutes before half-time and Arsenal were looking really good. I decided I could hold it for ten minutes, which almost turned out to be a fatal mistake, because by the time the match had finished I was bursting to go. The pain was crippling. I hobbled to the where the waiter had said the toilets were, clutching dramatically at my crotch and wincing with agony. My pain turned to dread as I reached the doors. The one door had a picture of an alien and the word “Mars” written optimistically under the alien’s face. I turned to the other door, was greeted by the baleful stare of another alien, and the word “Venus”. How was I supposed to decipher this nonsense in the moment of crisis? How was anyone supposed to know what this meant? And why? Why torture us like this? Why inflict your cleverness on a helpless people? Fortunately, I got a brilliant idea. I opened the Venus door and peeked in to see if there were any urinals. No urinals. Ergo, I was a Martian. Cunning saved the day. I’m still curious to know why I’m Mars, by the way.

Clearly there are many considerations when it comes to bathroom use. It’s not as simple as you might think. I have simple tastes. I pick the middle bathroom stall. No reason. I just like that one. I pick the urinal furthest from the currently occupied urinal. Eye contact at the urinals is embarrassing, so I try to avoid that as much as possible. Curious to know how others felt about bogs, I threw the question out on the interwebs: Do you have a favoured or preferred toilet? These are some of the answers. Enjoy.

My one at home that I share with my daughter and visitors. My husband has his own. If I really MUST, I’ll use the one furthest away from the door at a restaurant / mall. No particular reason that I can think of though!

I use the one closest one to the door, i read some scientific paper that says it would be the least used and hence cleaner. It makes sense because the majority would go for the furthest away for privacy.

I use the one that involves the least effort getting to.

At home is best, I’m funny about strange places and don’t like it if anyone can actually HEAR what’s going on.

It’s all about the height. Bogs that are too high do not promote erm … ease. And toilet paper must be 2-ply. 1-ply is terrible and 3-ply is like trying to wipe your bum with a cushion.