Toilet Anxiety!

I was an anxious child.

I ground my teeth while I slept. I had this recurring dream about Nazi vampires and this tall woman in a torn, black dress who would float around.

I had another dream that there was an icecream on my pillow and when I woke up was crushed by disappointment.

The Old Spice advert with the crashing waves and the Carmina Burana blasting gave me a terrible feeling of claustrophobia; and it pained me to watch the tv show Fawlty Towers, but I did anyway.

I used to think that my parents were actually scientists and I was an android prototype.

As an adult I don’t really have any abnormal neuroses aside from the fear that I’m going to die and think my life has been one big waste of time.

I know a lot of people who have public toilet anxiety. So much so that they leave work or a party to drive home and take a dump.

My only problem in this respect is I can’t go unless I’ve got something to read.

As an aside: Women find it strange that men read in the toilet. I think this is because most men sit down to read the paper or a novel and are bombarded with ‘conversation’ about random bullshit that they’re just not in the mood for at the moment; so they excuse themselves to the bathroom for 45 minutes for some peace and quiet.

One of the things that bugs me about public toilets is that the door always opens inward. Only about two percent of men wash their hands after any kind of bathroom activity so once I’ve cleaned the germans off my digits I’ve got to touch the infested door handle, making my hygiene redundant.

An interior design student told me this was the case because if a door opened out from a public toilet it would smack people walking past.

It made sense, but didn’t make me feel any better.

I wonder if women are any better in this respect?

I’m sure they’ll say they are but I’d caution anyone about believing it. We’ve all discovered since Sex and The City that women are as disgusting, if not more so, than men.

As an aside: I tried to get in touch with my feminine side by sitting down one night with Lucy, sharing on a face-pack, and watching Sex and the City until the early hours of the morning. What I discovered was that women know as little about men as men do about women. Hell, I think women know even less about themselves than we do about them!

People have other anxieties about the bog. This girl I know freaks out when she enters a smelly toilet because she imagines tiny poo-particles entering her nose and clinging onto her sinuses, another girl I know stresses if the roll on the holder isn’t facing “flap-side out” (as she puts it), and my gran has to run the taps when she’s getting down just in case someone hears her.

Another guy I know justifies not washing his hands because he knows where his nob's been all day - he washes before he goes as he's not as sure about his hands.

My dad used to say the best thing to do when you were nervous about meeting someone was to imagine them on the shitter (he didn’t put it as eloquently as that, but you get the picture).

And that’s just it, isn’t it? We all do it, so what’s the big embarrassment?

Always think it could be worse, you could be one of those un lucky sods with the open township toilets! I wonder where those guys get away to to read the paper?