It’s that time of the year again kids, the time when stinky, blue plastic boxes dot the fringes of every concert, festival and jamboree this side of the Spring Equinox. You may know these plastic boxes of which I speak by many different brand names, names like: Port-o-let, Porta John, Porta Potty… sure they’re going for the idea of “portable” but after you’ve used one you get the idea that the “porta” prefix might more accurately be derived from the old saying “any port in a storm”. I say that because it’s an act of sheer desperation to clamber up into one of these blue boxes for a quick spot of relief because they reek of chemicals and ka-ka. They’re humid as the Okefenokee Swamp and they’re guaranteed to have an even coating of pee all over the seat. In hot weather the temperature in these boxes can soar, combining with the nearly 100% urine-tinged humidity to create miniature weather systems; perfect storms of pee. I could swear that there was a port-o-let at the 1998 Midtown Music Festival with a chemical blue hurricane crashing around the walls like a wild beast.
For years this bothered me.
I felt so bad for you ladies that there were inconsiderate guys in our ranks who couldn’t take the time and effort to pee straight into the hole, I mean, c’mon there’s even a stand-up urinal mounted to the wall of most boxes these days! But then everything changed a few weeks ago when the truth was revealed to me by a group of slightly inebriated girls who were out having drinks before a concert…
The truth is, it isn’t the men who are peeing all over the seats in the porta-potties, it’s the women!!
I’m told that they crouch (some say hover) over the bowl so as not to touch their pretty little bottoms on a potentially germ-ridden plastic toilet seat. Unfortunately, fine control and aiming are traits that God and nature did not bestow upon the fairer sex and the end result in this instance is a sort of collective self-fulfilling prophecy of splatter resulting in a waterlogged, foul-smelling plastic box of yuck…
“Oh the seat might be dirty, I’d better hover… wait, now it is dirty, now I have to hover….” is apparently the way things happen for the ladies.
Speaking as a guy, this truly is a revelation. It’s groundbreaking, a paradigm shift, a magnanimous pardon and a previously unafforded glimpse into the Secret World of Women. It’s disturbing, it’s thought provoking and most important of all, it can be prevented.
The first step is pulling the dread secret of “crouching women” into the spotlight. Step forward Ms. Celebrity, Ms. Famous Author, Ms. Talk Show Host. Step forward and admit that you are guilty of “hover pee” better known as “squat splatter”. The first step is admitting that you have a problem.
While I applaud social responsibility of all sorts I remain cynical… it’s going to take a lot of women changing their routine to make a difference. I am therefore working on a project that I’m calling “Plan P”. Serious investors may contact me through the usual channels.
No woman in her right mind (meaning she’d have to be INCREDIBLY drunk) would sit on a portajohn seat. (Many of them don’t even have seats.) Frankly, I can’t imagine any MAN sitting on one either.
I was trained to ‘hover’ in public potties from the time – well, as soon as I was out of diapers. Think about this from your own perspective Drew. How much time would you want to spend with a woman who didn’t ‘hover’? ;-)
Speaking of “incredibly drunk”, I was at the annual Cinco de Mayo slash Birthday Party for JD Taylor over in Grant Park last night. One of the best of all the ones I’ve been to insofar as the attendance. I mentioned to JD that I’d written an article about porta-potties and he straightened up and proudly declared “Well I ordered the Ambassador this year!”, gesturing to the green (not blue) box a few feet away from us. His pride was evident, as was the odor of chemicals once I stepped into The Ambassador. Interestingly, this model of porta-potty sports a SINK instead of a “sidecar” urinal. I wonder how many guys peed into the sink by mistake. As the night progressed the potty was increasingly covered with girl-pee and I watched as one young woman (not lady, because she flashed her boobs at us later) flopped her way into the box. A friend of hers kept the door slightly ajar to make sure that she aimed in the right direction. Within a few moments there was a marked “ka-flumpph-ka-bumpa-da-bump” and everyone outside looked at each other with the immediate and shared knowledge that Miss Drunk-as-a-Coot had slipped and fallen into the floor of the porta-potty. No hovering there m’lady~!!!
Dew it is a good observation, but i truly feel women are handicapped without a penis, so its better they simply pull their panty down and squat. No need for porta-potty or sink. ha ha ha
And there’s our first comment from New Delhi…