Subtitle: Wherein I take my personal observations and consider them normative…

Yesterday, I wrote:

> I just realized that the difference between the way men & women choose a parking place for a car has everything to do with public bathrooms.

I have long noticed a difference between myself and my wife when choosing a parking spot in a not-crowded parking lot.

I will leave at least one vacant spot between myself and the next car.

She will park right next to another car even if she doesn’t have to.

Yesterday I realized that our friend (also female) had done the same thing.

Maybe it was because the parking lot just had the lines re-painted, but suddenly I saw it just like each spot was a urinal.

Every man over the age of reason understands that when choosing a urinal, you choose the one as far away from any other guy as possible. There was even an email which circulated a few years ago which had ASCII drawings showing how to decide.

But the rules boil down to this:

Unless you are at a sporting event, concert, or other extremely-high bathroom-volume experience, you do not choose to stand next to another guy at the urinal. Ever.

I mentioned this to The Wife and at first she laughed—but then she added: “Well, see, we always choose a bathroom stall next to someone in case there isn’t any toilet paper.”

I rest my case.

Really, what more evidence do you need?

Coda: when not using the urinal, men might choose a bathroom stall next to another guy. Most guys will try to get some distance between them and the next guy, but really, our highest priorities for the sit-down are a) clean seat and b) no previous unflushed content. Also, if we look down and there is no toilet paper, there is exactly a 0.000000% chance that we would ask the guy in the next stall for toilet paper. Seriously, I would sooner use my underwear as toilet paper than stick my hand under another guy’s stall asking for toilet paper, because these are your options for what happens next:

1) He pees on your hand

2) He poops on your hand

3) He ignores you

4) He puts his penis in your hand because he thinks you gave “the signal”

5) He comes out of his stall, kicks in the door to your stall, and beats the crap out of you.

6) He actually gives you toilet paper.

Now I know that seems like a one-in-six chance, but really, that last option is like 2% because “getting your hand peed on” has about a 75% probability.