Friday, March 18, 2011

You Again.

Oh, by the way, I'm taking last week off.

Wait . . . lets see, present progressive tense . . . but the adjective refers to a previous . . . mmmmm.

Oh well!

Moving on.

When you work or live in a place where you share a bathroom with lots of other people, you sometimes find a strange symmetry in your day. We might call this phenomenon the "pee buddy," were that phrase not entirely vile and prone to misinterpretation.

So let me be perfectly clear on what I mean. As you go through your day, and (hopefully) going to the bathroom a few times, you occasionally find that someone else is in there. The same someone else. Every time.

And while you're standing/sitting there reflecting (because what else do you do with that time), you begin to wonder why this individual always seems to be there when you are. Without fail, you come to exactly two possible explanations:

1. Due to an odd coincidence of personal biology, dietary habits, and discomfort endurance, you and this person have become perfectly in sync.*

2. This person is always here when you are because he/she uses the bathroom like 200 times per day, and there's got to be something wrong with him/her.

But how can you ever know? If there's some problem your buddy is aware of, you don't want to bring it up. And it's not like you can ask, anyway? "Maybe you should get that checked out" is not going to make the public bathroom experience any less awkward.

*The interesting thing about theory 1 is that it comes with the corollary: This person may be thinking theory 2 is true, and that there's something wrong with you.

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