My Week 177: My Favourite Bathroom Stall and Other Questions I’ve Asked Myself

Questions That I’ve Asked Myself

A while ago, I was nominated for a Unique Blogger Award by my good blogger pal Cecilia, from Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks who writes wonderful posts about family, life, and cool DIY stuff. The post which, to me, best captures her writing and her warm personality is High School Planet Dance Notes: Tips for Survival, which made me laugh and get a little teary all at the same time.  Then last week, I was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by another blogger pal, Brooke Breazeale of Summoning Magic: A Gypsy’s Tale, world traveller, humanitarian, and all around super writer. One of my favourite Gypsy posts is this one—it’s both eloquent and brutally honest: The Girl Who Bullied Me Gave Me My Greatest Gift. But this is not about these awards, which are great and made me feel truly blessed, but more about how I’m not good at follow-through. I have pretty strict rules about this blog—I only post once a week on Sunday, and I only ever post humorous stuff or political satire, because humour is what helps me get through life’s sh*t. So herein lies the dilemma—how do I honour these amazing women while at the same time doing my thing? But I’ve come up with a solution. You see, normally you respond to these nominations by answering questions that are posed to you or whatnot, and today I will be answering questions that I have posed to myself, based on the notes on my phone that I was going to write about this week anyway. I don’t know if these are the kind of questions that demonstrate the appropriate gravitas for this type of accolade, but it’s what you get when you nominate mydangblog.

Question Number 1: Which bathroom at work is your favourite?

Ah, now THAT is an excellent question. At work, there are five bathroom stalls in the ladies bathroom. Stall 5 is my favourite, because it’s against the far wall with no other stall to the left, so if stall 4 is empty, I ALWAYS use Stall 5. However, if stall 4 is occupied, then I immediately go to Stall 2 if the ones on either side are both empty. I NEVER use Stall 1 because a ghost lives in it. Stall 4 always smells weird. Also, I heard that the number 4 is considered unlucky in some cultures, and no one wants to be unlucky in a public bathroom. I WILL use Stall 3 in an absolute emergency. 

Bathroom Stall Overall Ranking:

5: 1
2: 2
4: 3
3: 4
1: Boo.

Question Number 2: Do you have any other bathroom stories you’d like to share?

Why yes, I actually do. A couple of weeks ago, I was on the train, and I had to use the facilities. I try to avoid this like the plague for three reasons. First, you could actually GET the plague from a train bathroom. Second, the bathrooms on the train always smell like urine, and third, if the train derails, I would have no advance warning to brace myself against the toilet and the far wall, as one does. But I’d had a little wine, and decided that I couldn’t wait until I got back to my condo. I went in, shut the door, and slid the bolt across to lock it. I was just finished, and was standing in front of the mirror, not because I wanted to look at myself but because if you stand in front of the toilet and the train shakes, you might end up IN the toilet, instead of bouncing off the door. My legs were apart for stability, and my pants were pulled up at the back, but they were open in the front because I hadn’t started zipping yet. Suddenly the bathroom door flew open. A man was standing there, staring at me in shock. I pulled my top down over the front of my pants and gave a small shriek, but not before I looked in the mirror and caught the eye of a guy sitting across from the bathroom. He looked away, smiling to himself, and in that fraction of a second, I was pleased to note that I was wearing the nice underwear. Then the man who opened the door slammed it back shut, leaving me there mortified. So now what? I couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever; aside from the fact that the smell of pee was getting very heady, my wine was back at my seat. So I straightened myself up, opened the door, apologized to the man who’d opened the door for not locking it properly (because that’s what Canadians do), marched to my seat and tossed back my wine. Like a boss.

Question Number 3: Have you been in any car accidents lately?

Funny you should ask. Right after Christmas, I went to the mall to spend my gift money. On the way back, I stopped at a Yield sign because a car was coming the other way. Suddenly, my car jerked forward, because the person behind me was unaware that sometimes people have to actually stop at Yield signs in order to actually Yield, and he ran into me. It was about -30 degrees, but I put the car in ‘Park’ and got out. He was sitting there in his mini-van, looking annoyed. I gave him a “WTF?” kind of arm raise and went to his window, which he reluctantly rolled down. He was a tiny elderly man. He was wearing a fedora and an alpaca overcoat, which made him look like a cartoon character.

Me: You hit my car.
Him: I thought you’d started moving.
Me: Well, you’d better get out and look at the damage with me.
Him: But I’m on my way to work.
Me: Buddy, you just hit my car. You’re not going anywhere for a little while.
Him: But I’m going to be late.
Me: Dude. Come on.

So we pulled into a parking lot around the corner. At this point, I think he realized that things were getting serious, and he started apologizing profusely. As it was, he’d just taken a bit of paint off my trim kit, and honestly, it was so f*cking cold that it wasn’t worth the bother of making him feel any worse than he seemed to. “Well,” I said finally. “I can get some touch-up paint. Now, skedaddle.” OK, I didn’t actually say “skedaddle”, but that would have been funny, and totally in keeping with the way he jumped back into his mini-van and took off. Just like a cartoon character would.

Question Number 4: Have you had any weird dreams lately?

I had a really weird dream last night, but it involved my dad saying a naughty word in reference to a man’s special parts, a word he would NEVER say in real life because he is dignified and mature, and also if he did say it in real life, it would be in a very broad Scottish accent and no one would understand him, unlike in my dream, where he kept saying it and everyone, including my mother who was also in the dream, just nodded sagely in agreement. But the other night, I DID have a dream I can tell you about. It was nighttime and Titus was running around the house, so I let him out into the backyard. Suddenly, he transformed into a small, female Asian child who was tending a fire in a firepit. I told her it was too close to the fence next door and might set it on fire, so she started piling rocks onto the firepit, but that wasn’t helping. I got a hose and started to spray the fire to put it out, then suddenly Gene Wilder’s head appeared in the firepit, and I sprayed him in the face. He started screaming and I woke up. Ta dah. Go interpret THAT sh*t.

Question Number 5: Are you good at math?

No. The other day, I was trying to do 2017 minus 24, and kept coming up with 1983. Then I would add 1983 and 24, and come up with 2007. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, so I asked someone I work with, who said, “It’s OK. You take 4 away from 7, which gives you 3. Then you borrow 10 from a friend so that you can take 2 away from 11.” And even now, I only THINK that’s what he said, because it still doesn’t make sense, even though I know it’s right, and maybe the problem was that my stupid friend wouldn’t loan me 10 because he’s a dick. Or maybe I just suck at math.

There you have it. I hope that I’ve fulfilled my obligation. The other thing I’m supposed to do is nominate other bloggers, which I’m happy to do, because I love all your writing. However, a lot of my blogger colleagues have received these awards already, and I don’t want to overtax anyone by making them answer my questions. So if you have never been nominated for an award, and you’d like to be, just message me and next week, I’ll nominate you, because you all deserve it anyway. Don’t be shy. The only rule is that you have to answer the 5 questions above. But if you don’t have a second bathroom story, you can substitute a question of your own. And this better not be like the time when I was a radio DJ with a classical music show, and I ran a contest, and the only person who called in was my mom.

46 thoughts on “My Week 177: My Favourite Bathroom Stall and Other Questions I’ve Asked Myself”

  5. I am honestly laughing my ass off* too hard to even respond right now. I don’t know which question to address first. I think I want to answer them all, but I might just do it privately in my favorite stall at work, while doing math in a dream.

    I couldn’t get a car accident into that bathroom quip, as hard as I tried.

    You are simply the best, Suzanne. I’m heading to church (this kind = 🍻) and I’m gonna tell all my pals about this incredibly funny gal friend I have on the internet, who writes these amazing weekly stories of her incredibly hilarious life, and they’re all gonna look at me strange. Again.

    Whatever. At least I’ll have on nice underwear. 🤣

    Can’t wait for week 178! (<– yeah, I had to scroll up to check that; short-term memory glitch 😉 )

    *I could have short-handed that to "LMAO" but I wasn't feeling acronym-y today. Cheers!

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  7. You are hilarious, and I can’t think of more appropriate questions you could have asked yourself. Who doesn’t have a bathroom story? So funny! This post also serves as a great reminder to ALWAYS have the ‘nice underwear’ on. Well, and to lock the goddamn bathroom door. Thanks for all of this, I am going to be laughing about this one for a while! 🙂

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  8. That was pretty much perfect and exactly why you keep getting nominated for awards. Funny, just before I started reading this, I was revisiting a dream I had last night.
    This was one of the reoccurring themes I have the good fortune of revisiting from time to time. I’m given something to care for- someone’s pet, a small child…some sort of living, breathing creature that depends on me for its survival.
    Without fail, I forget about this living, breathing creature, and by the time I reach it, it’s shriveled up on the brink of death.
    I know, it sounds horrifying. It kinda is, except for sometimes, the object I’m caring for offers a bit of comic relief.
    Last night, for instance. The creature that was put in my care was a fish: a slimy, scaley, large brown fish. We’ll call him Chester. Chester, because that was the name of my fish…that I was supposed to be caring for…that was eaten by my cat after I introduced the two, thinking they could be good friends and keep each other company.
    For whatever reason, I had to physically take Chester with me with no vessel to transport him in. Apparently, as I was carrying him around in my arms searching for said vessel, I got distracted.
    By the time I realized I had left my little friend laying on the kitchen counter, I was a million miles away and basically had to cross oceans, slay dragons and win wars before I was able to reach him. Fortunately, when I finally did, he was still alive, still laying on the kitchen counter, gasping for the air. (No wait, not air. Air was definitely not his friend at that point.)
    I quickly plopped him in a nearby sink and he was splashing about in a matter of seconds…
    So how exactly shall we interpret this one? Confirmation that opting out of procreation was the right decision? Or maybe the fish was me- the inner child I’ve failed to nurture?
    Or, maybe it’s my boots.
    It’s been snowing for the past two days, so I’ve been wearing my snow boots…which, oddly enough, have Koi on them.
    I know you’re struggling right now, trying to decide which is more bizarre- that I had a dream about a fish I was carrying around like a child that I left for dead…or the fact that I’m wearing boots with koi on them…
    You’ve still got me beat, though. The whole Gene Wilder’s head/Firepit thing…now that shit’s weird. ;o)

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    • In the last 6 months, I’ve had two dreams about the same thing–abandoning or neglecting a creature that was my responsibility. The first time it was a pig, and the second time, a puppy. They were quite possibly the worst dreams I’ve had–I cried both times. In real life, I would NEVER neglect an animal, so why in a dream? I keep trying to figure out what it means too, and I wonder if it has something to do with my guilt over leaving my son to go work in Toronto. He’s in uni now, but I was away all week for his last year of high school, and I still feel sad about it. But Gene Wilder? Who the hell knows?!

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      • Oh girl, I made light of it here, but these dreams are torture. Once it was my puppy, right after he died, once it was my friend’s baby. The panic and guilt I feel, even after I wake up, is horrific. Yours does sound like it’s connected to your boy. 😦 Of course you know, you didn’t abandon him, and I’m pretty confident he doesn’t feel that way either, but we still seem to need to torture ourselves on some level, huh? Well, since we’ve both exposed these particular demons that haunt us in the night, maybe we’ve stripped them of their power and they will now retreat! 🙂 big hug to you.

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  9. Dee-El says:

    I closed my blog years ago, but I may have to relaunch it just so you can nominate me. It seems a little unethical though (which doesn’t bother me, but might be a bit counter to the point)

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  11. I’m also hideous at math. I had no idea what the answer was in that problem and whether anything the guy said was correct. He could’ve been speaking total gibberish and I would’ve accepted it just to avoid having to deal with numbers myself. I once forgot to lock the bathroom door at work and a male colleague flung the door open as I was squatting over the toilet seat. I thought I might fucking die, but he turned out to be even more mortified. I had to approach him and make a verbal agreement to pretend t never happened and move on. I was secretly glad that he saw I was a clean woman who didn’t place my buttocks on the actual seat… it’s was the only thing that kept my dignity in tack.

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  15. I’ve been told I’m very good at dream interpretation and it does seem pretty clear that Titus is, for you, an adopted child, and you sometimes have to prevent him from acting out in harmful ways. But then it completely goes off the rails. I’m going to assume you don’t bear any ill will toward Gene Wilder and that it was unintentional that you not only sprayed him in the face but juxtaposed this with stories of the loo. Freud may have said there are no accidents but I think even he would agree that sometimes a bathroom is just a bathroom.
    Having said all that this was an excellent “Dear John” post.

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    • Your analysis sounds spot on as far as the first part goes, then yes, I have no idea where the rest of it came from. I DO have a fear of fire, but not of Gene Wilder. Also, I do seem to write about bathrooms a lot, so maybe it’s a symbol in my own personal Jungian journey–who know what it stands for!

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  16. My hero! Here’s my bathroom story: Someone wrote a work newsletter blurb about our building having the “most pleasantest” bathrooms around. I died a thousand deaths, first OBVIOUSLY, the grammar, and second, well, everything else. Really, how did I miss this opinion poll? Oh wait! Here’s another: I once was at a breakfast restaurant doing the thing in the stall, door latched, and a woman shouldered the door, not once, not twice, but powered her way, slamming into it til the door popped open on her third slam. Somehow she managed to look surprised to see me sitting there. Like it was MY deal. I’m not Canadian, so said something like, “What the hell?!”

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