Posted by Mark Weiss on September 05, 2012
I’ve never been a fan of toilet seat covers. This goes back to my earliest experiences. You know the flap that hangs over the ledge in the front that, I guess, is supposed to protect your equipment from the Petri dish of germs in and around the toilet? I always thought that part went in the BACK instead of the FRONT. Why? Because my experiences with poop consistency (consistency as in “firmness” not “uniformity”) and my poop blowing all over the place, I thought that the flap was an attempt to protect the integrity of the bowl. I was also young, naïve and stupid.
I generally do not use toilet seat covers. In the nastiest of Alcatraz Bathrooms, my procedures are as follows. First, I wipe the seat with TP. I’m not shy about TP usage for this purpose—this is not a time to show how “green” you are. I must protect my hands. Then, I do one of two things. Either I use or try to use (more on this in a moment) a toilet seat cover, or (most often) I use TP (folded over two or three times, depending on the level of nastiness), over the seat and hanging over the front of the toilet (like the seat cover flap).
When I say I “try” to use a toilet seat cover, well, toilet seat covers and the containers that dispense them are fraught with design flaws. I think that, truly, the crappiest (pun intended) of engineers are assigned to crummy projects such as this. About half the time, the seat cover rips just exiting the mounted dispenser. I used to think that I was pulling them out incorrectly, but I follow the up-down, down-up, in-out, out-in whatever instructions, and the thing STILL rips. And what the heck is up with style that is folded over twice, essentially in quarters? I find these on airplanes mostly, and I guess that the design was driven by space limitations. That thing comes out of the dispenser just fine (usually), but unfolding the thing? I have nothing but scraps in my hands.
I cannot tell you the number of crumpled toilet seat covers I have thrown away, flushed or (forgive me) left orphaned on the floor behind an Alcatraz Bathroom toilet.
The ONLY good news here is that the most abominable of Alcatraz Bathrooms usually have industrial flush capabilities so that stopping up the toilet with all the extra paper (both unwiped TP and seat covers) is not a common occurrence.
I have to say, in cleaner Alcatraz Bathrooms, like at a friend’s house or at work, for example, I don’t usually cover the seat. What kills me, though, is that there is ALWAYS, ALWAYS one stray hair on the seat. Without fail. What to do about stray hairs? Listen, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and sometimes you’re wearing Milk Bone underpants (a nod to modern philosopher Norm Peterson). God help me, sometimes I just sit on them. I’m not proud of this, but we all eat plenty of rodent hairs in our food so a stray hair on the seat can’t hurt. Right?
And you kids out there, just to be clear—you can’t get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat. Tinkerbell—you CAN get pregnant by being alone with a boy for over three minutes. That’s why your dad has to come with you on all future dates.