I Need a Stiff Drink (and Martha)

I suppose I should start this by mentioning that my middle daughter got her expander device installed in her mouth today. It's the precursor to her braces, the lower set of which will be installed in about six weeks.

But that's not what I'm on about.

(In my standard tangential style, time for a 'zing' to the left. Let me first note that what you are about to read is an entirely true story.)

What is wrong with this picture?

If you had to go to a second sheet for your list, you are right.

I realize it's been about a million years since I was in high school. And I realize that when I was in high school, the bathrooms were where the smokers and stoners hung out to keep from getting caught by The Man. (Which was stupid, because the vice-principal always knew right where to go to round them up. But, hey, wisdom comes slowly at that age.) And they were kinda dirty. But I didn't wanna spend a lot of time in there and didn't do a vast amount of clinical research. You know?

Anyway, my point is that I don't remember my high school bathroom being so nasty. And I mean NASTY. N.A.S.T.Y. (See how not just the "N" is capitalized?)

Today, when I went to pick up [Kid 2], I needed to use the ladies room. In hindsight, I should have used the bathroom at my office before I left work. But, by the time I got to her school I was performing the opening moves of the pee pee dance and knew I needed to take care of that, before we headed over to the orthodontist's office. (A mistake I will never again make, btw.)

I was delighted to see that the stalls in the girls bathroom had murals painted on them. An art class project, I'm sure, but they were whimsical scenes of woodlands and I thought it was darling. (The paper towel holders were painted to match.) Unfortunately, I believe it was all to distract me from the horror that was about to unfold before my eyes.

I went to the center stall and was annoyed to see what appeared to be cigarette ashes around the ENTIRE toilet seat. In my mind, I was thinking, "D'Uh! Of course they're smoking in the bathroom."

...and I moved on to the stall to the left. Which, coincidentally, had the exact same issue. Determined, I was, not to clean up cigarette ashes from these triflin' high school chicks, so I moved on to the next stall to the left...the last one in the row.

Guess what? Same issue. I mean they were almost identical. Not a few specs here or there, nearly the entire ring coated with ashes.

At that point, I figured I'd just have to clean one of them off, because I had to go. You know? But, ewwww!! The toilet in the last stall was stopped up with paper and there was balled up wads of it all over the floor, too. So, back next door I went.

Where I found a giant pubic hair at the front part of the toilet seat. My eyes rolled up into my head and I felt flush. So certain I was that I was going to fall over, I grabbed the door to the stall...just above the note about Tony Samuels and his unfortunate problem.

No. No. I could NOT clean this one up enough to use it. Back once more to the stall I'd originally viewed.

Not clean, but not horrifying, either.

It was then that I realized that it wasn't ashes on the seats, but burn marks. There had to be hundreds on each seat. GEEZ!!

I won't go into details about the acrobatics it took to actually USE the bathroom, but let me note that there was toilet paper in the stall. I'm sure some of you were thinking that was the next problem.

Two holes had been drilled through the wall and a heavy chain run through with two rolls of toilet paper strung on the chain. Ghetto, huh?

No. I am seriously not kidding about that. After the preceding, my sense of humor (and my nerves) were shot.

My goal was to get out of that bathroom as quickly as possible, but, knowing that Hepatitis B had to be crawling all over that place, I needed to wash my hands.

But, get this. The sinks were full of used paper towels. Because these lazy kids couldn't throw them in the trash can (though some of them did manage the floor toss) when they finished using them.

::sigh::

So, after removing a couple from the least loaded sink, ([Kid 2] was hysterical at this point, let me tell you)I turned the water on and literally gasped as brown water emerged from the faucet and flowed over my hands.

OMFG!!!!! My brain, if it had them, would have been screeching at the top of it's lungs.

I rinsed, quickly, in another sink. Dried my shaking hands and beat hell outta there.

Unbelievable. I gotta go sit down for a bit.

Obviously, this year's Christmas charity project will have to involve raising donations to get new toilet seats for my daughter's high school. Anybody get a discount at Home Depot?