THERE IS NO BATHROOM HUMOR

I was sitting and thinking the other day.  Sitting never turns out well for me, but I do it anyway.  I excel at thinking, though. One of the things I was thinking about was our bathroom renovations.  It was about ten years ago when we started our bathroom renovations.  I did not think it would take this long because our house is very small.  I was wrong.  As near as I can figure now, our bathroom renovations will be complete in either a month or ten more years.  When you live in a house full of women, you learn quickly that the bathroom must be perfect.  You also learn that it never will be perfect.  So you renovate.  There is no limit on the number of time you can go through this process.  My favorite place in my house is outside of it. A women’s favorite place in the house is the bathroom. I used to think a woman’s favorite place was the kitchen.  I even said that to my wife once.  I will never do that again.  I learned from that experience, although I did develop a serious resentment.  I found a way to deal with that resentment, though.  I went right to the heart of the beast, the bathroom.  I leave the seat up.  Not all the time though, just enough to keep everyone on her toes.

     The reason that the bathroom holds such a special place in the hearts of women is simple, I think.  The bathroom is where they keep their most precious things.  In our bathroom we have three hair dryers, two flat irons, two curling irons, a crimper, enough mascara and make up to handle any look from Goth to Jessica Rabbit, toothpastes, whitener, and mouthwash.  And that is just on the sink.  There are more power tools on my bathroom sink than there are in a tool box at a construction site.  In our bathroom we have two electrical outlets.  Some mornings there is so much power running through those two poor outlets that the lights in my neighbor’s house flicker.  More often than not, though, the breaker trips.  When the breaker trips I know it right away by the tone of the blood curdling scream.  There is no need to ask; I reset the breaker.  I can do it in the dark and in my underwear.  That works out well too, because that is how I prefer to do it in the event that I am electrocuted.  When they find my charred corpse, they will find me in death as I was in life, in the dark and in my underwear.  

     Next to the sink, on each side, are baskets.  I have never emptied one completely out but it looks like one basket is the Special Service basket.  It is full of every kind of tweezer and plucker and scissor and brush and comb Wal-Mart has to offer.  I asked my youngest once what they were all for.  She told me that she could tell me but that I would never understand.  I agreed.  The basket on the other side is the Last Rites basket.  It contains hairspray, mousse, cream for this and that, gel, and an assortment of other stuff in tubes and cans.  They are only clinging to life because they contain too much of whatever is in them to throw away, but not enough to produce true natural beauty.  There is no talk of throwing anything in those baskets away.  There is talk of adding a second Last Rites basket, though.  

    

I know my place and I know it is not in the bathroom.  I used to shave while I was in the shower.  I used to keep my razor in the shower.  No more.  I stopped because I kept finding it on the side of the tub or as I like to call it, the deforestation trough.  As I sat there thinking, I remembered shaving with my razor after finding it there once.  Just once.  I looked like I had shaved my face with a gap toothed beaver. A living gap tooth beaver.  The water-blood mix that was pooling at my feet was searching for a way through the four kinds of shampoo, cream rinse, body rinse, and conditioner bottles to the drain.  The drain was clogged with hair, rejected from the heads of three women. I opened the shower door and tripped on two empty shampoo bottles.  Just as I was about to fall into the tub, I reached up to the towel rack to try to grab a towel to steady myself.  It was empty.  I was going down!  I braced for impact.  Thankfully my fall was broken by a family sized tube of Nair and the pile of dirty towels, bras and panties lying on the floor.  A bathroom is a woman’s place.

     I was about done sitting and thinking, so I reached for the toilet paper roll.  I laughed at myself for even thinking that there would be more than two sheets on the roll.  Then I reached into the toilet paper condominium that we have next to the toilet.  It holds a dozen rolls.  It lasts about a week before it is empty.  It is stocked with the thickest, softest toilet paper made by man.  The women that use it carefully fold it to create a toilet paper blanket.  It takes about a half roll to make a suitable toilet paper blanket.  A suitable toilet paper blanket is one that is large enough to clog the toilet five out of ten times.  I put the new roll of premium toilet paper on the roll in the preferred over the top fashion.  Some women prefer the under the roll style.  My women prefer the over the top style.  I asked once.  I was told that the over the top allowed them to smack the roll in the dark, half asleep in the middle of the night.  This would allow half a roll to pour on the floor for the creation of the toilet paper blanket.  Though every single thing in the bathroom is important for women, the heart of the bathroom is the toilet paper.  It is even more important than the door, which, incidentally, does not be need to be shut when women use the bathroom.

     I was done sitting and thinking so I flushed the toilet, stood up, and surveyed the bathroom as I washed my hands.  It looked good and I started to walk out.  Out of nowhere, the image of shaving with a live gap toothed beaver flashed through my mind again.  So I turned around and put the seat back up. You got to keep them on their toes. 

     That is all.