More on Pet Peeves

A while ago I was talking about pet peeves with a friend who will remain nameless. She told me that one of her biggest pet peeves was people who refuse to use public toilets that already have stuff in them. I told her that I was definitely one of those people---that I never wanted to risk splash-back in a toilet that already had someone else's stuff in it.

Recently I emailed this friend and told her that now, every time I see a public toilet with stuff in it, I thought of her, and that I was not sure she really wanted me to think of her while I was looking at some stranger's crap. She emailed me back this:

How passing over used toilets became a pet peeve/another thing I may have already told you: I was at a football game in high school and I had to go to the bathroom at half time. The stadium bathrooms were gross, but I really had to go, so I waited in line with the million other women. There was one stall that everyone was avoiding. There was some #2 floating in the toilet, but the stall still had toilet paper, so I decided to go for it because after waiting in line, I REALLY had to go. I took care of business, and this is important--it was #1 only--but it turned out that the reason someone had left their junk floating there was because (I just used "reason is because"--a phrase I hate) the toilet didn't flush. So I left the stall. A girl started to go into the stall after me, but when she saw the poop, she gave me the dirtiest look. I wanted to yell, "It's not my poop!" Anyway, I didn't really know dirty look girl, but I knew she hung out with snobs. So now I assume that people who don't use poopy toilets are prissy snobs. I don't think I'd ever told anyone about this pet peeve before you, and when you told me that you avoided poopy toilets, I had to reevaluate my thinking. "[Cicada] avoids used toilets, and she's not prissy or a snob. Imagine that."

I'm pretty sure I haven't told you this one: When I worked at the wilderness camp, we used to drive past this skeezy Mexican place called Alfonso's on our way to the desert. Alfonso's had crazy huge burritos with every imaginable filling that were called--quite imaginitively--the Alfonso. They were so big that they had be wrapped with two big tortillas. I never managed to eat more than half of one. Even though they were kind of gross, they were good to eat when you knew that all you'd be eating the rest of the week was lentils and ashcakes. In the wilderness, you couldn't really be subtle about what you were going to do when you went behind the tree. If you were carrying your digging stick, everyone knew you were going to take a crap. No digging stick=pee only. People would say, "Going to see a man about horse" or something like that when they were going to crap. One guy who had eaten an entire Alfonso the day before walked out of camp with his digging stick, and said "I'm going to go bury Alfonso." So sometimes I call poop "Alfonso" in my head.

That is it. I have now told you every poop story I have to tell and I will not tell anymore poop stories, because it is bad enough that you think of me when you see poop. I don't want you to always think of poop when you think of me.

Anyway, I loved her poop stories so much that I really felt they had to be shared.