As a guy that has, unfortunately, spent many a hung-over morning in bathrooms on campus trying to simultaneously remember what I did the night before and what I needed to have done for the 9:00 AM class starting in 4 minutes, I have noticed a disturbing trend. Both down on UNL’s campus, and for the 2 years that I was able to call myself a Wichita State Shocker, I became adept at noticing the grafitti in bathrooms. I understand a little doodling while deucing if you’re in between “Fingerpainting” and “Personal Reading” in elementary, but not between “Accounting 200″ and “Latin Civilizations.” Here is what I have noticed in my personal study.
You’ll notice around campus there are different kinds of graffiti in the bathrooms. The first kind? The would be philosopher. At some point, some moron with a Sharpie decided that he needed to inspire the poopers. This messiah of morning dumps will write something like, “An Eye For An Eye Makes the Whole World Blind – Mahatma Ghandi” and then go his way, smugly believing he’s utilized his philosophy-degree-training. This quote is nice. I’ll be the first to admit that I like Ghandi and the stuff that he talked about but he’s not really the answer when you have 3 minutes before Canadian Lit. and you’ve got a 5 minute poop on the way. Call me uninspired, but for some reason I have trouble being uplifted when I have the runs. I don’t need world peace in this situation, Ghandi, just some Charmin Ultra-Soft and a can of aerosol. Ghandi himself wouldn’t even be a good enough dude to try to help me out in that situation. He’d say, “An eye for an eye makes the whole– oh come on. Damn this, I’ll just try another hunger strike. Good luck.”
Another kind of bathroom graffiti? The P.O.W. Pooper. You’ve all seen it. He pulls out a switchblade, a knife or some other sharp object that his parole officer should definitely know about, and carves something into the stall doors. Who the hell do you think you are, John McCain? How long were you in the bathroom? It’s like they were making notches for the “days spent in the hole” or some shit. I can’t imagine wanting to spend more time planted to the dirty mens room porcelain than is necessary to handle my business, let alone enough time to make a finished wood carving.
Yet another type? The A-Hole “anarchist.” This is the guy that always carries around a permanent marker in his skinny jeans so he can promote what he thinks is anarchy. You know, he draws those stupid letter “A”s with circles around them or writes “fight the power” before he skateboards away. What about “fight the poser?” I’ve heard of grassroots movements, but c’mon. You didn’t see Cesar Chavez going crapper to crapper with a paint brush. These guys don’t realize that if true anarchy reigned, I’d go loot their skate shop and start a large bonfire.
Maybe the worst type? The Rectal Racist. It seems like, for whatever reason, a completely normal guy steps into a bathroom and his worst, most-Mel-Gibson’ed up racism comes to the surface. He steps into the stall a normal, dignified, college student and goosesteps out with a pointed hood on made of TP. What is it about bathroom stalls that make people turn into the worst kind of bigots? There’s a lot of people that write back to the racists and then you have a whole social experiment gone awry, playing across a dirty bathroom door like a Yahoo! chat room put into print.
The final kind? The Dane Cook Crapper. This guy sits down with a standup act worth of material on feces and lets it rip. No pun intended. He utilizes his extensive vocabulary to use 17 different words that mean poop and rhyme them with stuff ranging from Texas to Ndamukong Suh. He scribbles down dirty poems, what he believes are witty sayings and undoubtedly laughs hysterically to himself on the way out the door. Perhaps he doesn’t write anything down on the wall, but instead goes home and writes a blog about it like some desperate, lame-ass. . .uh-oh. Ummmm. . .moving on from this one.
So as I sat down in the stall the other day and saw “An eye for an eye. . .” on the wall. You know what I wrote? Nothing. Because writing on bathroom walls is frickin’ stupid. Here’s how I operate sit, wipe, flush, done. There’s a reason people say things are “easy as shit.”
FIN
