POSTING #62

Urinals I Have Known

Why a posting about urinals?

I can hear someone saying that half of the people have no personal experience with urinals.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't wonder from time-to-time about what goes on behind the doors marked Men.

However, the main reason for the subject of this posting is that I have a handful of stories about urinals that keep jumping up and down, demanding to be told. They are blocking the sober, serious stories that I would really like to tell.

It will be so good to get those stories out of the way

So here goes.


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The pressure for a posting about urinals came to a climax recently when I was visiting the washroom in an elegant restaurant in Hilton Head (Note to American Readers: I will be using the Canadian 'washroom' rather than the American 'restroom'---after all it is a Canadian blog, eh).

There were two urinals side-by-side, separated by a modesty barrier. Mounted on a little dais, they stretched from the floor to chest-height and were broad. And unlike normal urinals made from cold, antiseptic white porcelain, these were made from a warm cream porcelain.

They cried out 'Class'. They reminded me of urinals in the washrooms of high-end private clubs. You know, the kind of washroom where there is an attendant to turn on the warm water in the basin, hand you a linen towel, and brush the dandruff off your shoulders.

Most urinals are mean, small items, about the size of a wash basin---but shaped somewhat differently---hung on a wall. Water comes in at the top and leaves through a drain at the bottom.

They are not pretty.

It is clear that no woman was ever involved in their design or manufacture.


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There are three main issues about urinals, in my experience.

One is the height at which they are hung on a wall.

A few years ago, fathers had to lift their sons and hold them while they did their business---as any child will tell you it is not easy to void your bladder when you are being held under the arms.

Now, most washrooms have boy-height urinals.

But the height of men's urinals can vary considerably.

When we first moved to Grimsby from Ottawa to open Denwycke House at Grimsby Bed and Breakfast, my brother, Jim, and I tested various local restaurants to see which ones we would recommend to our guests. One of Jim's jobs was to check out the cleanliness and over all adequacy of the washrooms.

He came back from one washroom, smiling broadly.

"How was it?", I asked.

"That plumber must have been a Texan. You should go and see."

The urinal was hung just below the ceiling.

OK, I exaggerate a bit, but I am not short and I had to stand on tiptoe to use it.

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The second issue with urinals is what someone delicately called 'human spillage'.

I remember seeing this sign in several restaurant washrooms when I was young:

We aim to please.
You aim too, please.

You would think that people of the male persuasion who can write their name in the snow when they are young, would not have any problem in using a urinal.

Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Which brings me to a visit to Holland in 2002.

As I stood in front of a restaurant urinal I noticed that there was an image of a house fly---enlarged many times---on the back of the urinal, just above the drain.

When it was wet, the image had a shiny, almost 3D quality.

When I asked some Dutch friends about the picture of the fly, they laughed and told me the following story.

Some years ago, a cleaner on a Dutch army base became annoyed at all the human spillage around the urinals, In one of those Eureka moments, he had an idea, "Why not give the soldiers something to aim at?'

He improvised a target and then affixed it to the urinal wall.

Lo and behold, the human spillage was dramatically reduced.

As one would expect with a great idea, it was soon picked up by others. It was adopted by non-military organizations in Holland and is now being used in a number of other countries.

I haven't spotted any 'fly' urinals on this side of the Atlantic but I am sure it is only a matter of time.

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The third issue about urinals is the flushing of them---or rather the non-flushing of them.

Traditionally, there is a chrome lever above the urinal that one is supposed to push down after one is finished.

Many people (OK, men) don't flush. They may forget because they are worrying about the latest balance of trade figures.

Or, they may not want to touch a lever that is sure to be covered with germs, viruses and other unpleasant critters.

Or, they may just be lazy.

In preparation for a 1991 visit to Singapore, I read in a tourist guide that the local government in addition to having fearsome penalties for the importation or use of illegal drugs and chewing gum, had instituted a must-flush policy for both urinals and toilets. To enforce this policy, they had created a plain-clothed toilet police force that wandered through public facilities fining people who didn't flush.

The hotel where Pat and I were staying had found a way to protect its guests---most of them foreign---from being embarrassed if they forgot to flush when they used the ground floor public washrooms.

As people approached the urinals, they broke a beam from an electric eye, and that flushed the three urinals. As they moved away from the urinals after finishing, the beam was broken again, and all the urinals flushed once again.

It was a waste of water, which at that time was imported in huge pipelines from Malaysia, but the hotel obviously felt it was money well spent so that its clients wouldn't be harassed by the toilet police.

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Finally, a story from Russia about urinals.

In Moscow in 1996, I took a Russian friend for his first visit to a Western-style restaurant. As we sat down at our table, I noticed my friend was looking around the restaurant for something.

When I asked, he said he wanted to wash his hands and was looking for the sinks that were common in Russian restaurants at that time.

I explained that we went to the washroom to wash our hands.

This horrified him. In the 1990s, Russian washrooms were very unpleasant places. The thought of washing one's hands in a washroom before eating was unthinkable.

Anyway, he went to the washroom and when he came back I asked him how the washroom was.

"Very clean', he said, "but I have a question."

"OK, what is it?"

"Why do you put ice in the urinals?"

When I looked puzzled, he explained that there were small balls of ice in the urinals.

Later on, I went off to the washroom and the 'ice' was of course crystalline deodorizing balls of some kind.

When I came back to the table I explained about the balls,

His look said that he expected that it would take him a long time to understand these crazy westerners.

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So, those are my urinal stories.

Thank you for bearing with me.

Hopefully, now that they have been aired I can return next week to more edifying stories.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #63 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.