Tuesday, October 28, 2008

No More Poop Dungeons!

The discussion of sensing water faucets followed me to work today, and I got some interesting and potentially useful advice on how to handle dysfunctional bathroom equipment from some of my patients.

“Lulu” had a good suggestion right out of the gate. She asked me if I had tried to clear the sensor mechanism.

“What?”

I never thought about the sensor getting gunked up with soap residue, therefore inhibiting the sensor from properly sensing. Brilliant! Of course, she followed this simple practical advice with her second suggestion, which was a little less practical. She recommended I try flashing the faucet.

“What?!”

She reasoned that if the theory on the color black disrupting the sensor was indeed correct, then flashing the faucet - exposing my bare flesh – just might be the answer. Of course, you hope a nun or a mother with her young son doesn’t interrupt this experiment…....

Amazingly, this bathroom conversation with “Lulu” lasted for nearly thirty minutes. Once we had solved the problems of sensing water faucets, we moved on to toilets and automatic flushing.

We’ve all been in a stall where the toilet refuses to acknowledge our presence and fails to flush when we’re done. No matter what dance you do, no matter how many times you get up and down from the seat, it simply ignores you and remains silent. Irritating!

Then there’s the toilet seat that you have to leap from to keep from being sprayed because it’s flushing action is so violent, that the water goes everywhere. Scary!

And there’s always that one toilet that rushes you out of the stall by flushing before your business is done – what’s that all about? Rude!

As annoying as all these little defects can be, I would still take them any day over the outhouse I used in the mountains of Canada. I hadn’t been in a real outhouse since I was a kid, when our family went camping out west for weeks at a time. I forgot how awful they can smell. When I used the one in Canada two weeks ago, I painfully moaned and groaned the whole time and officially swore off poop dungeons for good. I could have used a good toilet spray after that experience.

But enough about toilets and outhouses…………..

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