Aiming to Please

I had hoped to avoid this subject, but the outrage has become too great.  In the men’s room at the local bridge studio there is a sign that says “We aim to please.  We hope you will do the same.”  The sign, obviously the product of the female owner,  reflects a total ignorance of reality.  First,  I know no one who claims to be a deliberately careless “pointer.”   If the woman had only polled the visitors, she would have found that most males are proud of their directional capabilities.  Those private moments, in fact, become little internal  personal contests to see if one  can “hit” a previously designated area,  such as “out of the water but within the bowl.”  This is especially true in situations where the noise might call unwanted attention to oneself.   My thesis is supported by the popularity of those little rubber bulls eyes often found in public urinals.  The fact is that any “stream” has a certain amount of unpredictability, and is not always capable of being fully controlled.   Add to this the phenomenon of the occasional “split stream, ” and  you have a perfect explanation of what might pass as “carelessness” to the untutored.   How do we solve the problem, you ask?   One way is to require that both genders “sit down.”  This would reduce “travel distance” and some splashing, but would not guarantee 100%  compliance, and the social implications would be enormous.  It is hard to imagine a pro football locker room, with a row of sit-down toilets and players chatting gaily as they “take care of business.”  Of course, a whole separate issue is the cost of retrofitting an entire nation’s public and private bathroom facilities.   Millions of discarded urinals would clog our landfills, and their manufacturers would be forced to adapt or die. I certainly would not recommend such a dramatic action in this era of economic uncertainty.  A better answer, I say, is to accept that it is not a perfect world, and that 90% “compliance” should be something to celebrate.  The comedian Rita Rudner, in one of her comedy routines, complained that her husband was “not very specific ” in his bathroom practices.  My advice to him is to require Ms. Rudner to “stand up” for two weeks.  Just be sure there are multiple mops, buckets and a raincoat nearby.   If that happened,  I think that we would see signs like the one I witnessed at the bridge studio come down in a “New York minute.”