The Waddle
Each morning, I drink coffee with my breakfast, which is usually a bowl of granola. This culinary combination always results in a trip or, let's be honest, trips to the bathroom, both to urinate and drop fecal bombs (for those of you now wincing at the impending topic, I say to ye: "Oh, c'mon! Lighten up! What's funnier than bathroom humor?! After all, we're all humans, and I've yet to meet one of us who has NOT taken a dump at some point in his or her life, save perhpas Julia Roberts or Catherine Zeta Jones. Oh, and Wittgenstein and Kant, too, both of whose teleogocial view on the transcendental theory of ontol--just kidding...POOP! HA! Anyway).
On lucky days, I can kill two birds with one stone and complete both evacuations in one sitting, but on other days the whole process can be divided into as many as two or even three trips to the lavatory. On the particular morning I am about to tell you about, I recorded three trips: two pees, one crap. Now, there is one more thing necessary to understand before this story begins, and it is about my toilet. I have no heating in my apartment, which roughly translates to having a piercingly cold toilet seat on freezing winter mornings. So, if I can, I like to finish the peeing portion in my apartment before I leave, and carry out my morning duke at work where there are heated toilet seats. I attest: heated toilets are arguably the highest quality of comfort fathomable; very little compares to sitting on a warm throne of porcelain. Plus, taking a dump at work also allows me to justify disappearing for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, as my boss has not yet accused me or any other employee of abusing The Call From Nature.
So, on this morning, I was in my school's bathroom, relaxing on the heated toilet seat, and enjoying a few pages of a manual written in Japanese of which I could read approximately three characters. After a fair amount of time had passed, I began the wiping phase with a naive reach for the toilet paper dispenser, only to find that some scoundrel had completely iced me, leaving me without an outlet for decent wipage. No worries, I thought, and followed the directions of pushing the buttons and pulling the levers in the hope that an extra roll would drop down from what I describe as the "emergency compartment" located directly above the blank roll on the more technologically advanced dispensers. Nothing came out, though, so I knelt down to try and see if there was actually anything in the dispenser. Perhaps it is stuck, I foolishly thought. No dough. I had been left stranded in the stall without anything to wipe with, and I felt like a skydiver whose first parachute fails to open, and when he pulls the chord to his emergency one, the line goes slack and it is then that he must come to grips with the inevitable plummet to his surefire death. Well, maybe it's not as dramatic as this, but I knew something must be done, and this was to make a quick dash to the neighboring stall to take refuge in its hopefully abundant oasis of holy-grailesque toilet paper.
If you've been in this situation before—and I hope you have because it builds humility—you know that you cannot pull your pants up before dashing to the next stall because, well, you have not wiped yet. So, with your pants around your legs, you must do "The Waddle." Now, this penguin-like trot is no huge deal if you are in the privacy of your own home and must journey to a nearby cupboard to retrieve your spare roll. However, in a public bathroom it is notably more complicated. Because your pants are around your legs, you are forced to move more slowly which obviously increases your chances of being caught by another user. This (clearly) is ultimately what you do NOT want. So it becomes a genuine test of choosing the right timing to make the move to the next stall. First, you must listen very carefully to accurately assess whether or not there are any other members in the bathroom. Once you can be sure there are none, you slowly open the door and peak your head out to check (again) that there are no users that you failed to pick up on the radar the first time. If there are, you must abort the mission and re-try a few minutes later. Once you are absolutely, positively sure there is nobody lurking around the urinals or sinks, it is then safe to commence your waddle to the next stall.
On this particular morning, after I had exhausted looking for anything that I could possibly use as a wiping instrument, I began my preparations to waddle from my stall. No sounds of flushing, check. No hands been washed, check. No one talking, check. Okay, open the door…slowly, slowly...alright, it looks safe. I stood up, pushed the door open, waddled like I've never waddled before, and safely made it to the neighboring stall without being seen. I pushed on the door, but it would not open. Silly me, I thought, it's one of those pull ones. I pull, but it still does not open. Then, I glance down at the lock and it is showing the RED square. Occupied! Dammit! I forgot to do a sound check for the other stalls! Stay calm, I tell myself, just continue the waddle to the next stall.
It was then, exactly, that I heard footsteps. I instinctively turned my head and looked over my shoulder at the user who had just entered the bathroom. It was my boss.
There was no mistaking that, at that moment, I had literally been caught with my pants down in the men's bathroom on the second floor of the building in which I work. There was a curious expression on my bosses face—he was not laughing, he was not freaked out or even flustered. It is safe to say he looked very confused.
I broke eye-contact, turned my crimson face toward the vacant stall, waddled, and sat down in my sanctuary. I half-heartedly finished my business, and returned to the office where the embarrassment of having been caught mid-waddle awaited me in the face of my boss.
To this day, though, neither he nor I have ever spoken of the event. I like to think that he has had the same experience before, and out of respect for my bravery at attempting the waddle at work, he has chosen to “forget” that he has, in fact, seen my bare ass.
2 Comments:
Oh my god, is that a true story?! Either way, it was hilarious! I too have done "The Waddle," but I have never been caught waddling...yet.
Hi, I just read this article.
... No way !!
I've never tried The Waddle, but maybe someday I'll do that!
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