Monday, May 9, 2011
I now retract all the times I have wished for a tech-savvy toilet in my own bathroom.
A recent trip to the big city reinforced this inevitable fact when I found myself talking feverishly to a self-flushing toilet in the mall bathroom.
It did not occur to me prior to standing up that my assistance would not be required in the toilet flushing and I had but lifted my derriere from the seating position when a loud sucking noise engulfed the stall I was in, causing me to jump and turn around with my pants still at my ankles.
In a microsecond, a Category 5 foreboding choked off my oxygen supply—with far more impact than my recent “KD” moment or the one from 1990 before the car door locked and I realized I’d left the keys in the ignition and a child still buckled into a car seat—as I watched my bank card, credit card, and a $50-dollar bill that had slipped out of my back pocket and into the toilet bowl spin out of sight and into the bowels under the city.
My instinct to dive in after my possessions was thwarted by my Blackberry flying out of my shirt pocket, which I caught it in a two-handed catch above the toilet bowl, worthy of any save by any goalie ever in the history of sports.
Victorious in that moment, I also was thankful that my driver’s license, tucked into the other back pocket of my jeans was still there when I finally pulled up my pants.
And yet, my “mall crawl” had swiftly come to an end before it started. Funny enough 15 minutes earlier, I had taken off like a slingshot from the mall’s food court, where I’d left “Mr. Right Now” standing in my wake.
It was our first adventure shopping together in a mall and I couldn’t help but broach the subject of wanting to head off shopping on my own for an hour.
“When you say you need some time to shop, does that mean you don’t want me to go with you?” he had queried.
Suddenly, as I stood at the mall bathroom sink washing my hands I wished he were waiting outside the door just so that I could bum $50 from him for the remaining 45 minutes of my solo.
But of course he wasn’t, and I didn’t want to waste my quarter-hour searching for him in the mall, only to lose my nerve in asking for a small purchasing loan.
Instead, I took to grumbling and window shopping and tried on reading glasses and sunglasses—the ones with that little price tag that flops around between your eyes as you smile and admire yourself in the mirror, just as a really cute guy walks by and you feel like a buffoon.
And the magnified reading glasses were no better. All they did was allow me to see in the department store mirror, the black hair poking out of my upper lip, causing me to consider ripping open a tweezers package and plucking out the evil thing right then and there.
Needless to say I had baked myself into a hormonal casserole under a rolling thundercloud by the time my hour was up.
“That was THE most unsuccessful, disappointing hour I have ever had while shopping,” I muttered in his direction as I approached the meeting point.
“It didn’t go too well,” I growled.
Mr. Right Now raised his eyebrows and the first thought that popped into my head was that I’d just shown up as Medusa and revealed my true self to the poor man, who was about to dart like a gazelle out of the mall.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, in his soft, doctoring tone. “Come with me,” he added, and held my hand as we walked into the Laura Secord store.
Uh huh, he’s a keeper.
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