An act of desperation. We were bored. That's all I can say in our defense.
We were outlet shopping in Amish Country.
Yeah, I know, most of the prices are inflated rather than discounted, and who really wants to stand for more than two minutes in a J. Crew store? Well, my wife Barbara, for one. And lots of other women, who were dragging husbands, boyfriends and sons around. I continuously pointed out guys sitting (in the stores that were nice enough to provide chairs) with their hands in their faces, always answering "Yes, buy that one" whenever their female companion dropped by for a short visit. Kinda like the women on the phones at the prison.
After cruising Donna Karan, Liz Claiborne, Ann Taylor and other shops which find $100 an appropriate price for a halter top, it occurred to me that no outlet mall should be complete without a bar. Boy, that would get the guys out in a hurry. Of course, whoever has the Anheuser-Busch ad account figured this out a while back.
Enough of a tangent. I have to admit, some of the stores are actual outlets and there are some good deals to be had. You can buy a good breadmaker for $30 at the Sunbeam/Oster store. One of those ultra-cool chrome blenders? $40. A nice mixer? $65. The Sunbeam/Oster store kicks ass when it comes to prices. But we didn't buy anything there.
Barbara bought a load of clothes at (reasonably) reasonable prices, and we bought some margarita glasses. And a popcorn popper (one of the crank types, though not exactly the sort of one I was wanting). Almost bought some really cool beer glasses at the Mikasa store ($4 a pop for lead crystal; a decent deal). Most amusing, we saw bottles of Gates Sweet and Mild barbecue sauce (none of the spicier Original and Extra Hot varieties) for $4 a bottle. I do my barbecue shopping in K.C., where the bottles run about $2. Still, nice to see Ollie Gates getting his national marketing campaign in motion.
But the highlight of the day came in the restroom. The men's, of course. I pulled up in front of the urinal and saw one of those automatic light sensor flushing mechanisms. And printed on its face was "Welcome to the Angstrom automatic urinal!"
Alright, my mind began to wander. These things are already hooked up to an electric current, and the thought of being electrocuted through a thin yellow stream of effluent doesn't really excite me.
Enough of the horror. I imagined a day where the urinals and toilets talk. You stride up to a urinal and, like those talking Coke machines of years gone by, you're immediately accosted by "Hi there! Welcome to your urinal! Please take your time and enjoy your experience!" With the deed mostly finished, Lily Tomlin's voice pops out, asking "Did you tap?" And then, of course, "Leave the flushing to me!"
Imagine, however, a talking toilet whose attitude gets worse with each passing missed shot and egregious case of poor anal hygiene.
"You'd better wipe", it might say. "Damn, it looks like one of them cave drawings!" Or, if you're one of those pee-shy guys standing in the stalls, our attitude-adjusted friend might intone "Sit your butt down! The janitors don't need to be cleaning up your mess!"
Luckily, this sort of Gilliam-esque future will never come to pass. Guys think of their time in the restroom as an oasis from the storm. Women go to the bathroom in groups, so as to properly dish and preen. Guys hit the latrine in solitary, so as to sink imagined battleships floating on the pond, unleash poison gas on the advancing hordes or, in the most extreme cases, "drop the big one". This sort of warlike imagery is instinctual and universal. The moment of release makes guys extremely happy ("bombs away!"). And we'll be damned if some mechanical voice is gong to comment on our technique. After all, each guy hangs a different way. As sure a way as fingerprints to identify a man.
No, there's no way guys would tolerate little voices in the bathroom. Especially if they were eternally friendly. "Welcome to the stall, your calm in the storm. Please let me know if I can be of assistance." If I heard that, I'd stand right up and put my shoe through the automaton. I mean, if there's one place a guy doesn't need any help, it's when he's on the pot. Like Al Bundy said, a man's stool is his castle.
Yes, you can take that both ways.
Jon Worley ponders all things scatological in York, Pa.