To pee or not to pee. That is the question

19 November is World Toilet Day – a day to celebrate the humble, yet vitally important, toilet and to raise awareness of the global sanitation crisis.

Missed it by a couple, but the above is, of course, not a joke. WTD is designed to bring to our attention that while we might take the right to ‘spend a penny’ in surroundings that range from the palatial to downright disgusting, there are those in much of the Third World who have no access to sanitary facilities whatsoever. The subsequent result is rampant disease epidemics, vermin, parasites and every other bit of hideousness you could imagine.

The vilest public facility I ever visited was many, many years ago in the Belfast Bus Station. Yet, I am sure there are those in many parts of the world who would find it heavenly. That notwithstanding, I was almost pleased to learn that a couple of years later that same bus station was a victim of an IRA petrol-bomb and burned to the ground.


Anyway, my point about WTD was to just bring it to your attention and to suggest you might find out more about it and how you might help in this regard. The rest is up to you.

My other point in this screed, however, is to look at a human functioning aspect a little closer to home. So, at the risk of being indelicate – and I’m not indelicate; I am one of the most delicate guys you might happen across; really – today I want to talk about peeing.

I don’t mean the function of peeing. We pretty much all know how that works. No, I want to talk about access. It has been said that people under the age of 50 – except pregnant women – pay little attention to where the public facilities might be located in whatever journey they have to make. Those over 50 know where they all are. They sometimes need to.

I once kept brief company with a young woman who had a bit of a ‘control’ problem. It was good because I learned where virtually all the potties were in this community, some of which I had no idea they existed. For her, however, it was essential so that she could avoid discomfort or, worse, humiliation.

Personally, I find, especially with an aging population, that too little thought is given to public access. Many businesses do not want the pubic using their facilities unless they are customers. I can understand their displeasure about granting access, because bathrooms end up being trashed. At the same time, it is a bit heartless.

I saw an incident once that proves my point. A woman entered a shop with a middle-aged mentally-challenged man who was obviously in extremis. She asked the clerk if the man might use the restroom.
“No,” said the clerk, entirely too curtly, “The bathroom is for paying customers only.”
“Sorry,” said the woman who had taken the man under her wing. “That won’t do. I am not going to see him embarrassed in public, so give me the key, please.”
The clerk grudgingly forked over the key, muttering under her breath. I made a mental note to not do business with those guys again.

And, while it is tough enough for prostate encumbered men of a certain age, it is even more difficult for women due to the logistical nature of their micturitions. Men can, as irritated women often point out, simply step behind a tree. I mean, they risk arrest for indecent exposure, but they can still do that.

Urinals, such as we have them in the west, at least, are not available or practicable. Consequently, at any public event like a concert or game, the queue outside the women’s biffy is 20 times longer than the men’s. I know women have railed about this injustice many times, but they should not give up the fight for more equitable access. It is the fact that an inadvertent public wetting can be, for many, traumatic enough that it can lead to agoraphobia.

I can suggest no immediate solution for this other than to suggest that communities have an obligation to make certain there is adequate access to bathrooms.

And maybe one step in the right direction is to get over our prissiness about this function that we all, both sexes, do. Back to the line up outside women’s restrooms, I have often invited women to come in and use the men’s. Even if there is a guy standing at the urinal, the interlopers cannot see anything – as if they were interested in any case. Likewise, a couple of times, at dire moments, I have used the women’s.

So, maybe we should be more like the Europeans who are more comfortable with ‘one size fits all’ public peeing. Having traveled a bit, and having shared public facilities with members of the opposite sex, I can recall no discomfort. So, maybe it’s time we grew up on this continent.