me’s blog

My coworker spotted this sign in a public restroom during her trip to Virginia Beach last week, and graciously shared it with me upon her return.

Let’s see.  Where to begin.  Okay first of all, seriously?  You have GOT to be freaking kidding me.  Is this really necessary?  And if so, for whom?  What’s the intended demographic here?  I’ve known puh-lenty of alcoholics and addicts in my day, people who would swallow or snort or drink just about anything and ask questions later.  I can say with absolute certainty that despite the numerous stories of people hitting rock bottom that I’ve heard while in recovery, stories which frequently include waking up covered in one’s own vomit and/or piss, NOT ONCE has anyone ever mentioned drinking from a toilet or a urinal.  From a urinal?  How would one even drink from a urinal if one wanted to?  And why bother?  It’s not as though a urinal provides an overflowing abundance of water anyway.  Besides that, the angle is all wrong - especially those low urinals for the vertically challenged down at the end of the row.  Better stretch first, or you could throw your back out!  Perhaps a straw would help, but fortunately that would be an unlikely find in a public restroom.  A silly straw would probably be ideal, but that might just make the whole thing look silly.

Is this gross misuse of public facilities unique to men and their urinals, or do women have their own version of the sign in their "hygiene lounges"?  I find it rather difficult to imagine a woman drinking from a urinal, but not a whole lot more difficult than imagining a man drinking from one.  Admit it, the visual is a tough one to put together.  Maybe this sign is meant for children, which brings to light a whole other set of concerns.  Has this great nation’s once enviable educational system deteriorated to a point where children are no longer taught the fundamental difference between water that is drinkable and water that people have peed in?  Is this the whole point of the "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" movement?  Was it shortened for catchiness and commercial accessibility from its original name, "NO CHILD LEFT To Drink From Where Someone’s BEHIND Just Defecated"?

Perhaps I’m being closed-minded and this is just another hip new trend that has somehow passed me by, thus prematurely casting me in the role of the curmudgeonly old man whose three recent hip replacements have ultimately failed to replace any trace of bygone hipness, leaving me to gently rock on my rickety porch while pointing a wrinkled, liverspotted finger at today’s youth and chastising "those crazy kids and their loud music and their wacky toilet-slurping ways".  My sincerest apologies for the unwieldiness of that last sentence.  "When I was your age, we drank out of Britta pitchers and our sentences were never more than 21 words long!"

But I think the pièce de résistance on the sign has got to be the inclusion of the phrase "Non-Potable Water."  Um, if you’re moronic enough to go drinking out of toilets and urinals and if you find yourself incapable of comprehending the first part of the sign, chances are you probably don’t know what the word "non-potable" means either.  Hell, the only place I’ve ever even heard the word "potable" is when they have that stupid "Potent Potables" category on Jeopardy, a category which I inevitably bomb every time.  It just seems to be a pointless addition to an already rudimentary sign, unless of course Alex Trebek was the impetus for the sign’s creation in the first place.  Oh my God!  That’s it!  Alex Trebek is on a one-man mission to drain every drop of moisture from every urinal cake in every public restroom across America!  I’d imagine potables don’t get much more potent than that. 

Wow, suddenly the phrase "suck it, Trebek!" takes on a whole new meaning.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 10:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.