RELIEVING MYSELF

18 April 2022

One of the questions in yesterday's Sunday Stealing was about the strangest place where you have ever urinated or defecated.  I told the story of the outhouse at our friend's "Eric's Property" which is probably still the strangest place.

But I've been thinking this morning of various strange places where I have relieved myself.

There was a park near our house in San Francisco.  It had no bathroom and I used to go there periodically when I was in grammar school (I almost got raped there once, but I screamed so loud the guy ran away).  One time I desperately needed to pee and climbed into the bushes to do it.  I got it done, but tore my pants in the process and then had to walk home with the back of my pants torn.  One of my classmates, who teased me all the time in school, called to me from his upstairs apartment.  I don't know if he saw the hole in my pants but I had to keep backing away from him...and then walk four more blocks home trying to cover my backside.

There have been a number of places when we were camping in weird places (like Death Valley) where there was nowhere to pee and you had to go off into the bushes to do it.

There was a line of outhouses at a campground in Yosemite when we went camping with the kids.  Paul had to go to the bathroom so badly and we stood in line for one to open up, with him shaking up and down trying to hold in the urine.  When he finally got a free outhouse, he wouldn't go in because it was so smelly.

The most embarrassing for me was at the library I frequented every week in grammar school.  As an adult, logic tells me there must have been a bathroom in the back, but I was too afraid to ask the librarian and so I just peed on the floor and pretended I hadn't done it.  I think I also may have done that while standing in line to go to confession.  We all had to go to confession every Friday and I know there was no bathroom in the church.

There have been several unusual places where I have relieved myself.  Like the bathroom at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo

Many of the rooms at the Madonna Inn are unusually decorated, like the Cave Man room, the Jungle rock, the Gypsy rock, the Daisy Mae, and even a San Francisco room.

The Daisy Mae room

There is a Japanese restaurant here in Davis where we have eaten several times.  I was surprised when I went into the ladies' room to discover it had two toilets...and no wall between them.

We visited friends of Mike and Char's in Alaska many years ago.  They had a small house with one room that I think had a  tree in the middle of it and a ledge for sleeping.   It had a huge computer room in the basement...and no indoor plumbing.  You had to go to an outhouse outside.  I wonder what that was like in the -50⁰ winters.

And then there is the bathroom of my friend, who is a Star Trek fanatic.  The bathroom is filled with Star Trek memorabilia, including a Darth Vader toilet seat and an R2D2 laundry basket.

And then there is our guest room, which was wallpapered in old fashioned toilets for many years.  When Ned and Marta remodeled the house, they kept the wall paper to use as the background for photos to hang in the bathroom.