The Unappreciated Power Of Porcelain

In the great, unending Battle of the Sexes, there has remained an ever-present obstacle to peace that continues to elude most people to this very day. At first, it seems a trifling sort of thing, something that bears little import to the greater campaign on either side – but it is far, far more than that. When recognized and addressed properly, it signifies a symbolic understanding and represents an agreement to concede a mutual respect for the opposing gender. Far too often, married couples fight pointless skirmish after pointless skirmish, losing as much ground as they take while never quite getting the point. The goal of the war, for either side, is not to win or lose – it is simply to reach a level battlefield.

I present to you, then, the most contentious object in the married household. Whether it represents the most significant threat to equality in your marriage, or the ultimate manifestation of your mutual love and respect for one another, the choice is ultimately yours. I wish only to humbly point out a third option available for dealing with this terrible object, which many of you seem to have never considered. I am speaking, of course, of the household toilet.

Visual aid supplied for the intelligence deficient.

Arguments and opinions concerning whether the toilet seat should be left up or down is a thread woven around the hearts and minds of spouses everywhere, if comedians, movies and television sitcoms are to be believed. And, while it might not amount to quite the hullaballoo that it’s made out to be by these dubious sources, it is something that is bound to come up whenever a tripod lives with a smoothleg. The problem is that this should never be an issue. The fact that it is one – however slight – is something that, I think, says much more about how we think than it serves as any sort of commentary on gender equality.

Gifted with the mutant power to stand up while they pee, men like to leave the toilet seat up. Women, lacking this particular superpower, prefer the seat left down. The problem is, neither of these options represent good solutions to the problem. Demanding either requires an acquiescence of defeat from one gender to the other, which is unacceptable. Either the man in the relationship admits fault and takes on the burden of lifting and then lowering the seat, or the woman accepts the fact that she’ll just have to put the seat down whenever she needs to visit to porcelain depository. Either way, one ends up doing work the other could be doing, so it sets the stage for resentment.

So, the third option? It’s simple, stupid: close the lid. Most household toilets have a seat and a lid, but the latter seems to only be used when it’s covered in some sort of frilly hat and closed when company comes over. Any other time, it’s relegated to just sit there, perched above the seat and leaning against the tank, ignored and forgotten. I say it’s time to remember the lid. Embrace the lid. With a closed-lid system, where both spouses close the lid, each partner has to do an equal amount of work whenever visiting the loo, or hitting the head, or whatever you want to call it. Sure, enforcing equality through mutual respect might feel a little unamerican at first, but it really is for the best – and I promise you won’t wake up a communist.

Additionally, if you have little children in the house, then keeping the toilet lid shut is a great preventative action to take that can help to guard against unfortunate and costly plumbing bills. Trey, for example, has suddenly taken an intense interest in throwing things into the toilet. Last week, he was sitting on his potty chair when he unceremoniously stood up, walked over to the edge of the bathroom counter, and picked up one of his mother’s socks. He then turned and calmly walked back to the potty chair, sat down, and threw the sock into the open toilet next to him.

“Trey!” I exclaimed. At first I was shocked at the randomness of such a curious act, but I quickly realized that I’d have to fish the sock out of the suspicious looking water in which it was now swimming. At the thought of that, I found myself reflexively shout, “Why would you do that?!”

It was at this moment that I realized I had become one of Them. Those People. Parents.

I used to think that the parents of small children were, themselves, a little bit soft in the head. They appeared to walk around wearing eerie, blank expressions on their faces. They seemed perpetually lost and confused, and expressed these deficiencies through irritability and frustration at the slightest of provocations. I didn’t know why this was, but for a little while, I suspected that only stupid people had kids. I was wrong.

Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but those vacant stares and confused expressions were actually conceived and birthed in the fiery kilns of parenthood, where crazed sculptors known as children take up fiendish tools to carve terrible and hideous features into their parent’s faces. They do this early on, of course, when the severity of their cuteness is dangerous and disarming. Slowly, they work their magic. A cut here, a nick there, and before you know it, they’ve created a ghastly masterpiece, which they then toss into the searing heat of a parental oven to set the glaze and fire-harden it into permanence.

Oh sure, you could dismiss me as being overly dramatic – but you probably don’t have kids. It was when I shouted, “Why would you do that?!” when it hit me. I was not asking Trey a rhetorical question. I was truly and literally confused, and needed his help to understand. I needed a three-year-old to explain something to me. Oh, how far the mighty have fallen!

Every parent says that their children are advanced for their age, but this is only a small and comforting lie designed to hide the fact that Little Johnny eats his poo.

When he couldn’t explain – when he wouldn’t explain – I understood what it means to be a parent. It means that you do walk around in a state of semi-confusion, with a befuddled and weary expression resting on your tired face. You look that way not because you’re stupid, but because you live with tiny, stupid people who doing tiny, stupid things. And, while you long to understand why children do the stupid things that they do, you ought to just slowly begin accepting that you never will. It is a mystery beyond your capacity to solve, because your brain just doesn’t work the same way.

Children see the water in a toilet as some sort of miniature, mystical ocean under their command. Like tiny Tritons, children control the ebbs and flows of the amazing toilet waters with the arcane power of the chrome-plated lever on the side of the tank. It might as well be a swirling whirlpool of the river Styx for all they know. The rush of the water as it spirals down, the satisfying whoosh as the last of it leaves the bowel, and the thrilling whish of new water coming in are, to a child, wondrous and exciting events. Possessing minds not yet dulled by the banality of mundane things, these simple happenings are amazing in the mind of a child, and so children are amazed by them.

The conflict comes from throwing adults into the mix with children. Our ways are not their ways, and so we are not meant to understand them. To make any effort to do so is to take a short trip on a fast bus that’s driving straight into the mouth of madness. It is not recommended. Instead, simply understand that you will never understand them. They live in a different world that functions with different rules than we do. Granted, their world is the better one, but we can’t let jealousy get in the way of good parenting. We also can’t let good parenting get in the way of not looking like slack-jawed yokels.

On the seashore

Play with your children, certainly. Laugh with your children, definitely. Love, nurture, and teach your children, without question. But please – please, Please, PLEASE – don’t try to understand them, for that way lies only sadness. Assuming for the moment that you do eventually manage to reach some level of toddler comprehension, understand that no good can come of it. We are meant to lose the ability to find fascination in the repetitive qualities of annoying toys, somewhere around the time we stop eating paste and licking our shoes. Trying to take a severe u-turn on life’s cognitive development highway – just so that you can identify with a tiny human who laughs at toilet water – can only end in a spectacular crash up, resulting in having to wear an embarrassing yellow helmet for the rest of your sad and confused little life. Don’t do it!

The moral of the story is to keep the lid closed, and avoid being drawn into a philosophical debate with a three-year-old. The former will help keep you and your spouse on an even keel as you navigate the fjords and rapids of life’s marital waterways, while the latter will quite likely prevent you from going completely insane. Never say I didn’t warn you!

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NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

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