Is there anything better than sitting down on a nest of ass-wipe propped atop a public toilet seat and tucking into all the fantastic words written on a bathroom stall?
No. There isn’t anything better.
And if you’re about to argue with me, just shut up already. You’re lying to yourself. People write the weirdest shit on bathroom stalls, and it’s a tiny piece of the human condition that is endlessly fascinating. Don’t lie to yourself.
I love knowing who is in love with who. Or how that guy drilled yo mama last night. I love knowing that Kate Smith has a phat booooootay and Billy Fey can kiss my a$$.
Oh, the heinousness of the bathroom stall wall.
I could read the stalls of public bathrooms for days on end.
Except then people would get weirded out that I was in a public restroom for days on end and probably call the authorities or something, which would mean I’d have to explain my obsession with bathroom-wall literature which is already a difficult enough task in the best of times (this article for example).
So now, in my elder age, I’ve settled on reading park benches.
Although not usually as heavily soiled as the traditional shitter stall, the park bench can be a treasure trove of weird and wonderful writings.
When I was young, there was a rickety wooden bench on the pier where my friends and I would sunbathe on hot summer days. We grew up in a tourist town, so on any given day, it would be challenging, to say the least, to find a spot to set up on the packed beachfront. Temporary day tents, barbeques, and sunburnt bodies littered the lake from 7 AM onward, so our teenaged asses always had trouble finding a spot since we couldn’t manage to get our butts out of bed any earlier than noon.
That was until we found the bench.
One day by sheer luck, a place was open to set up our day camp near this particular bench. There were 10 of us, and we arranged our towels and beach bags around the spot. Large pine trees provided shade and cover from the authorities for when we wanted to spark a doob. It didn’t take us long to realize that this was the perfect place for sunbathing and swimming — we knew we’d have to secure it for future days.
Carving your name on public property may not be the wisest idea, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We each took our turn and, using whatever sharp-edged object we could find (tweezers/nail files/the metal part of the lighter), carved our name in the ageing wood of the bench.
Then on any subsequent visit, when we’d find someone sitting around our bench upon arriving, the conversation would go something like this:
Me: Um, exsqueeze me?
Unwanted visitor: Exsqueeze you?
Me: You’re sitting in our spot. *My confidence was always spurred by the gaggle of teens standing around me.*
Unwanted visitor: I’m pretty sure this is a public space, so it can’t be yours.
Me: Wanna bet?! *sometimes, I’d lunge forward to scare them at this point but considering I’m 5 foot nothing and used to wear bright blue eyeshadow with pointy pigtails sticking out from either side of my head, I feel like I wasn’t as intimidating as I thought.*
UV: *rolls eyes*
Me: That’s our bench.
UV: I don’t see your name written on it.
(do you see where this is going now?)
Me: Ha Haaaa! And that’s where you’re wrong, my friend! *then, my friends and I would call out our names importantly while pointing to our signatures on the bench.
Whether this actually scared off the unwanted visitors or they simply didn’t feel the need to argue with a bunch of irritating 17-year-olds remains to be seen.
Either way, we usually were able to procure our spot on those summer days, and that’s why the defacement of public property will always hold a special place in my heart.
While walking the dog a few days ago, I noticed some writing on one of the benches in the green space we often visit. I strolled up to the bench and miraculously saw “SKANKOLA” etched in big block letters into the wood.
It reminded me of my days as a teen fighting gallantly for my place on a beach in a summertime tourist town.
I sat down on the bench, fondly reminisced about those days, and silently thanked the universe for sending me this love note reminding me that the best stories come from the unlikeliest places.
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This post was previously published on it’s just foam.
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