We country boys never really thought about it. Out on the farm whenever the urge hit you you’d just whip ‘er out and let ‘er rip. Never give it a second thought.
But then going to town required some new training.
Walking down the street in Rainy River with my then two and four year old sons, I suddenly realized they were no longer by my side. I turned and there were Scott and Mark with their pants down lined, up along the curb taking a whiz.
Time for a few social protocols. “But Dad, this is the way we do it at home,” was Scott’s reasoned response.
When my late wife Norma, the Pearl of the Orient and I, moved from our country home into the big city of Rainy River in 2002, I was put into intensive training to improve my urinary practices…. At least until the shrubs I planted around the yard provided better screening.
The Pearl herself had a much more practical approach to such issues. Whether it was a conference or a concert, when the squirming line up at the women’s washroom stretched half-way down the hall, action was required. Meanwhile the Men’s had no waiting, so action was obvious…who claimed designing architects were intelligent?
Into the Men’s, past the urinals would march the Pearl, her hand strategically raised to shield her line of sight, commenting as she hurried to a stall,” Relax gentlemen, I’m a nurse and you haven’t got anything I haven’t seen hundreds of times.”
Another time an acquaintance was at a new club in Edmonton. The protocol was you’d wait in the bar until your table was called, then you’d march through the lobby and into the dining room. On the way through Glen decided to pop into the washroom to process some of the German beer he’d taken on. He hurried through the appropriate door and noted the unusual arrangement of a long line of private stalls… no urinals. But he hurried into the first unoccupied one and proceeded to the business at hand…. Ah sweet relief!
Suddenly a quavering voice came from the adjoining stall, “Elizabeth is that you?”
From a few stalls down the reply, “No I’m down here. Why?”
“I think there’s a man in the next stall!”
“Oh. How can you tell?”
“Well, the feet are pointing in the wrong direction!”
The only question left was who was going to leave first.
