Toiletries

Do you ever find it weird how everyone gets around pretending they don't poo? Except for people who blog about it like me, and those rude sorts of people who go on about the shit they just had because it's funny and they want to embarrass you (I would never do such a disgusting thing). You would think that nobody ever does it the way no one talks about it. Pooing in the workplace is a prime example. How completely embarrassing is it to be caught out dropping one into the bowl and someone walks into the bathroom while you're in the middle of it, and you know they've heard you? It's like you've been caught looking at porn, or something. The embarrassment! You try to make a clean getaway, without them seeing that the pooer was you. As if afterward they're going to talk behind their hand to everyone else when you walk past, "Hey. That's the woman I just heard taking a crap before." What the hell is that public pooing embarrassment thing all about?

I feel pretty casual about bodily functions. Poo and fart jokes are still funny to me. I think it's kind of cool the way our bodies do these really gross things. But still, I must admit, I cannot poo in public. I will either put a whole lot of paper in the bowl so that you can't hear it, or I will wait until the person in the cubicle next to me leaves. And oh, what happens if both of you want to poo? Is it just a thigh-shuddering wait to see who will give in first and give in?

It would be liberating if we all could poo in public a bit easier, wouldn't it? But yuk. When you hear people pooing in public toilets, doesn't it gross you out? It's the same feeling I get when I have walked through somebody's fart. If it's someone I don't know at all, sometimes it makes me unseasonably irritated, as if their fart has permeated my entire body, making me dirty and having to go home and have a shower.

Which is a bit pathetic, really, isn't it?

I also find it a bit pathetic that women's menstruation is even more of a no-no taboo subject than poo. But then, I suppose I can understand it. If it was men who menstruated, I'm sure I would be grossed out entirely by it and it would seem terribly mysterious and weird. But I wonder - would the ads on telly all feature thin blue liquid, or would men have insisted, as the ones with far more outward power, on it all being put on the table? I'm not sure.

But anyway, I'm not talking about menstruating. I'm talking about the one we all get to share in. Poo. Please take part in my poll over there <== Very scientific it is. I thought of it before when I was otherwise engaged. I know that there are different sorts of people who do different things with their toilet paper. Some fold it so that it is a nice little Princess and the Pea type situation so that there is no chance of getting any poo on your hands. Others scrunch it, maybe for the same reason (personally, I think scrunching feels like you've got a greater depth. Folding is too flat to me, unless you happen to be using 96 ply toilet paper). If there is different toilet paper preferences going on among people, there must be different thoughts on poo viewing also. And I want to know. These are the kinds of things I really want to know. So please participate. It's not like anyone is going to know your personal answer (unless I can identify you on SiteMeter, sitting there tracking my visitors and monitoring who does what, so that I can use it against you later, making threats that you go onto your own blog and rave on incessantly about how wonderful I am, or else I am going to tell everyone that you look at your own poo all the time).

Pooing. I must say, I feel great satisfaction after a big poo. Do you? I hate the ones where you strain so hard you work up a sweat and it feels like you lost 14 kilos, and you shudder upon delivery. Those ones are difficult. And they generally happen kinda quickly so you're left wiping your brow and overwhelmed and have to go and lie down for a few minutes. I prefer the ones that are slower, and I can read a page or two of the book which often sits next to the toilet for such purposes.

When my friend John came back from Canada recently, he said that one of the things he was looking forward to was having a crap in a toilet where your bum wasn't so close to the ground. Which got me thinking. I suppose I just tend to assume that all toilets are the same height. But obviously in Canada they are shorter. Canadian readers must find that a goodly percentage of their "wow-look-at-that-im-kinda-proud" sized poos give then a nice little bidet wash afterwards. Bidets. They seem a bit ... well, anal to me :)

But of course some cultures don't have toilets at all but squat instead. Which is apparently really good for you, squatting. Apparently good for women's gynaecological health but also good to help you do poo easily. So there you go. Sitting on a toilet may not necessarily be the best way to do such a thing. Still, it's what I've grown up with, and it's much safer for us clumsy types who are prone to falling over.

Here is a blog that someone has written about their own poo. Those pictures made me feel a bit ill but I laughed. Is this normal behaviour for a 37 year old woman, or am I just giving my inner 10 year old boy too much free rein? http://www.dailypoopoo.com/