Lavatory Romance in Salisbury, MD

Our story begins in Salisbury, Maryland, where I was attending a tournament with the GW Ultimate Frisbee B-Team. The ultimate was great - I always love trying to aid in player development, in any sport. I also got to be around people I don't usually get to see and hang out with. However, take away the ultimate and getting to see one of my friends from home and this was possibly the worst weekend ever.

First and foremost, I got my first legal reprimand ever - a speeding ticket from the Maryland State Police for going 70 in a 55... in a car with a broken spedometer... when I wasn't even supposed to drive that day... on a road with few if any other cars to gauge my speed by. So I was pissed about that. Secondly, I realized, once we got to our shitty motel, that I had forgotten my overnight bag. All I had was my jerseys, my cleats, and my other assorted tournament clothes. So here I was, pants swampy, shirt covered in mud, socks soaked, speeding ticket in hand, and the party was in three hours. Needless to say if someone had given me a reason that weekend, their face would have been a bloody crater.

Anyhow, faced with the prospect of going to the party in my current condition, and having spent numerous weekends in the South, I immediately concluded that the best way to clothe myself cheaply was to find a Wal-Mart. I took the speedometer-less car I was driving down the street where I found the great beast lying in wait to take my money. My first urge, however, upon entering the store was to walk briskly to the lavatory to, how shall we say, drop a deuce. And here, while dropping the kids off at the pool, I got the impetus for writing this. Not because I have all my revelations and intellectual thoughts on the pooper, but because of the guy in the stall next to me.

First off, let me say that I am firmly against using public toilets for #2. But what happened next was, in my mind, inconceivable. I hear a "Hey, what's up." This guy can't possibly be talking to me, I think to myself. Oh god, he's not talking to me... he's... ...The guy starts talking on his cell phone. To his girlfriend. Well, maybe it was something important. No. He took up the typical guy-talking-to-his-girlfriend tone (everyone knows this sing-songy, soft, unthreatening, completely different from normal, I-just-had-my-balls-removed tone) and asked about a million times "Why didn't you call be after you got home from work?" He talked about absolutely nothing that could possibly be of any importance.

Yeah, that's kind of weird, you might say. But the hilarious part of the whole thing is what he did when he was done. Not done with the conversation, done with the other thing he was doing at that point. He interrupts their assuredly riveting conversation, asking "B...ba... baby hold on a sec..." Then I hear the TP rolling out. The man asked his girlfriend to hold up and stay on the line while he wiped his ass.

You gotta wonder what the girlfriend would have thought if she knew where the supposed love of her life was while he was making said phone call. How healthy can your relationship be when your boyfriend thinks of calling you while he's defecating in a Wal-Mart bathroom?

The whole thing was more funny than it was annoying, but now that I think about it, talking on the phone while you're on the shitter is pretty rude. Not to mention that I think the very idea is disgusting and nearly unthinkable to a person with at least some social grace. But seriously, the bathroom is a sanctuary. Like talking on the elevator, talking in a public restroom is something of a taboo. I think everyone realizes that the acoustics in a restroom often make your conversation audible to everyone therein. People don't want to hear your conversation - that's why we keep our voices down when having a conversation in a public place, and that's why we don't talk in the elevator or the restroom. Not to mention that the last thing I want to hear while taking a dump is the one-sided, disjointed cell phone conversation.