Journal of Nursing Jocularity

I imagine many men who might be reading this article have often wondered why women spend so much time in the bathroom.

MIT went so far as to do some research in the area. They discovered that women on average spend 90 minutes in public bathrooms vs. men who only spend thirty.

Some of this is quite obvious.

Women have more to take off and are much more interested in seeing if they look good before they leave, and we love to chat with other women and compare notes about just about anything.

More importantly, however, is the toilet training that has been handed down through the generations which takes time and effort. I remember going shopping with my mother and having to go to the bathroom. My mother took my hand and led the way.

We then went into the stall and the lesson began. She demonstrated the proper way to take the toilet paper and layer it on the seat so that I would not have direct contact with it. Then I was to gently sit on it, so that the paper did not bunch up and fall into the middle of the bowl.

Now she was exceedingly adept at this. When I attempted it on my own I found that my configurations only ended up bunching together leaving me with a bare seat.

When I reported this to my mother she said forget the paper, just hover over the seat. And so began a lifetime of hovering. This is fine if your quads are up to par, but if you haven’t been going to the gym you could be in big trouble.

In recent years toilet tissue has been confined to an apparatus that looks like a Ferris wheel with a cover. In the past if you had to hover you could easily access the tissue because it was in the open on a spindle. Now in addition to behaving like a helicopter you have to try to grab a few pieces of tissue which often get stuck or come out in shreds. In order to get more you have to insert your hand into the holder and pray it doesn’t take your hand hostage.

I have often had to ask the woman in the next stall for help, hoping that she had been able to get some extra tissue without being scarred for life. I believe that the inventor of this maniacal gadget must have come from a position of extreme frugality and figured that two pieces of tissue per person was the way to keep costs down.

Well there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I now carry my own tissue and a bacterial spray, and a small hatchet in case I forget to bring them.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Q: What do you say to a seven-foot tall maniac karate black-belt who loudly demands to leave your locked unit? (more…)

We’re living in a world that’s moving incredibly fast. On top of our personal problems and everyday pressures, we read the newspapers and watch the evening newscasts to learn that corporations are being forced to downsize and massive technological advancements in the workplace are causing people to drastically change their lives. Cell phones, Blackberry’s, e-mails, text messages, and even micro-communication applications like Twitter are clogging our minds with an overwhelming amount of information, leaving us with little or no time to relax, unwind, and focus our attention on the big picture.

To compound this, political unrest, crime, disease, prejudice, and violence are running rampant, as they have done for decades on end. The divorce rate is at an all time high and war seems to be the only answer to remedy differences between nations. It’s really no wonder why so many of us have to be medicated in some way or another in order to cope with the madness we have created! (more…)