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The intermittent huge puddle under the urinals at work concerns me. It comes and goes, lately with increasing frequency, like warm weather in the springtime. Today it was under the right urinal, yesterday it was under the left urinal. Of course I don’t stand in the puddle — who would? — but I can’t avoid those urinals entirely, either. While I assiduously leak into the opposite stall, that golden bloom is seeping into the tiles, a reeking marinade of hygienic failure, and I know I’ll stand there eventually, the faded puddle forgotten.
And so I fear for my sneakers. People say that your hair and your mouth, possibly your fingernails, too, are the filthiest parts of your bodies, teeming with microbial horrors. Filthiest parts of your body, yes, but it’s my shoes that worry me. I don’t mop my hair daily on that piss-darkened floor, I don’t gnaw on the urined ground, I don’t dig my nails into the peesoaked grout and tile, but I plant my shoes there several times a day, rocking foot to foot in my beautiful fraying black Chuck Taylors, maybe whistling, maybe staring blankly at some fixed point on the wall, effluvia wafting past unnoticed, completely clear of mind. I really should throw them in the wash. Or maybe try the women’s room.
comments
My Chuck’s shoe strings always come untied. I usually notice when I’m taking a piss at a urinal, standing in a puddle of someone elses. I try not to think about it too much.
posted by Shawn Carpetbagger on April 15, 2004 4:16 PM
That’s why they’ve got rubber soles, my friend.
posted by Davey on April 15, 2004 4:44 PM
They say that a healthy person’s urine is sterile. Didn’t I hear some folklore about its being used in ancient times to clean wounds?
Which isn’t to say that urine lying in a puddle on a bathroom floor would stay sterile for long. Hmm — maybe it’s you’re shoe that’s contaminating the urine with bacteria and not the other way around.
posted by Prentiss Riddle on May 8, 2004 8:02 PM
You’re? Your!
posted by Prentiss Riddle on May 8, 2004 8:02 PM
What you say is absolutely true. But you’ll note that it’s more acceptable to drink champagne from a woman’s slipper than to drink anybody’s urine — fresh, healthy, from a clean glass, or otherwise. I encourage any readers to verify this empirically.
Urine undoubtedly comes in handy in a pinch. Take, for instance, the story of Maynard “Snuffy” Smith, a WWII B-17 ball turret gunner, and the first enlisted man in the Army Air Corps to receive the Medal of Honor. They say that he singlehandedly repelled attacking German fighters, administered first aid to a wounded crewmate, and extinguished a raging fire “by hand.”
Meanwhile, a little googling reveals that some recommend urine as a rewetting eyedrop or as a general curative for such ailments as “gangrene, various types of cancer, diabetes, consumption, disease of the heart valves, Bright’s Disease, bladder problems, malaria, fevers, wounds, burns, bronchial asthma, and many other afflictions.” And then there’s this: “Urea has been shown to be one of the best natural moisturizers around. I have heard that Madonna uses urine for this purpose.” I report this dispassionately and without judgment.
posted by jacob on May 10, 2004 6:04 PM
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