As a kid, boys at least, we learn to pee by “sinking the toilet paper” or “hitting the cheerio”. Is it weird that cheerios are also the same food parents give their infant children? Anyway, I remember being toliet trained and at no point during that was I taught to spit before using the bathroom. Doesn’t matter if it’s standing up or sitting down, every guy launches a loog before he goes. I guess the term should be salivo (a saliva salvo). I’m not sure what the purpose of spitting beforehand is, but we do it.

What we do not do, however, is make eye contact or speak to anyone when in a public restroom. EVER. If you ever walk into a restroom and you happen to make eye contact with another male, you immediately look to the left or right, sometimes straight up, but NEVER LOOK DOWN. That’s highway rest stop behavior and sends the wrong message.

Recently, while using the restroom in my building, I had a gentlemen come to the urinal next to me and ask me “Havin’ fun yet?” while looking directly at me and smiling. Now, I know this man. He’s a nice guy, but, for some reason, instead of emailing me, calling or stopping by my desk, he has chose this time to catch up.

This brings me to the role of bathroom as meeting place. Men’s bathrooms are a couple of stalls and a row of urinals lining the wall. From what I understand, women’s restrooms are stalls only, but the urinals are replaced by couches or some other form of sitting area. I caught peeks of the entry to women’s restrooms and there it is, a couch and separate sitting area serving almost like a foyer area before taking a separate door into the restroom. What’s the point of these areas? Do women have secret society meetings? Is that why they go in there 2 at a time? How do they get a quorum if there is an even number of women?

I just have an image of a group of women (an even number, of course) discussing their husbands/dates/significant others and then giving each other advice or talking about how undercooked their chicken was. Is this the same for lesbians? Two women go out on a date, does one ask the other to go to the restroom with her? On a first date, doesn’t that send a mixed signal?

But, I digress, back to my story. I’m standing at the urinal when this gentleman comes in and asks me if I’m having fun yet. I was dumbfounded. In almost any other situation, that phrase is used as a conversation starter, but unless you’re Tom Hanks in “A League of Thier Own”, the ensuing conversation would never be more than 30 seconds long. That’s if you have talking points ready when you unzip.

I’m mid-stream and I have absolutely no answer. “Yeah, I’m having a blast” or “I would be if my hands weren’t cold” what do you say? There’s just no way out. If I say nothing, I’m rude. If my reply is too energetic, or involves eye contact for an extended period of time, then I’m a pervert. I immediately looked down as to signal to him “Well, I’m peeing” but it was at that moment I had a happy accident. Creatively.

Every man will default to making a claim about the size of his member when given the chance. Ladies, ask a man if he saw the movie “Anaconda”, read the novel “Moby Dick”, or has done any woodworking and invariably he will gently push his hips forward and reply to you with the exact same question. Using that theory, I took a variation of this and used it in a non-sexual way to answer this man’s ill-timed question.

After looking down I gave him the standard “Can’t wait until 5:00” response. This messes with his head a little. Am I ready to go home from work or has standing here kindled some sort of rebaldry to take place later in the privacy in my own home?

“They keeping you busy?” He would not be deterred.

I only had one reply, “Yeah, I’ve got my hands full.”

Not another word was spoken as I zipped up, washed my hands and exited.