I have a very poor record when it comes to proposing new holidays. I have sought to increase the market for holiday observances which can help me sell more greeting cards or postcards, but despite my mercenary motivation, my heart is pure. (The jury is still out on “Pure WHAT?”)
But while looking up something else entirely, I was amazed to find there is no nationwide celebration of the comfort station, or public restroom. I have seen local holidays which commemorate the relief of this or that fort during a war, but what about the rest of us?
Having found myself in shopping districts where you were required to be a customer to use a supposedly public restroom, and in public restrooms which hadn’t been visited by a maintenance crew in weeks (why is there always so much apparently pristine toilet paper lying in strips on the floor when the rolls are empty? Are there cameras just outside to capture wild and funny videos of people walking around with paper stuck to their shoes?) I appreciate those establishments which try to address our concerns. I admit I have not done as much research into the public potty as I might, having been warned by my grandmother, who used to take troops of Girl Scouts on hikes into the country to clean and tidy rural comfort stations. “The public,” she said, “is VERY dirty. I knew someone, now, alas, not going out much, who had found every public men’s room within a seven-mile radius of his apartment building. (He should have written his book, though he was less critical of unwashed restrooms than he was of those which required a climb down steep stairs.)
There IS a World Toilet Day (November 19) but this is primarily concerned with sanitation concerns the world over. Where is a holiday suited to expressing our gratitude? I will have to work out some technicalities before I announce this new festival. Who gets the cards we’ll send out? Store managers? Janitors? We could send notes to the High Panjandrums (Panjandra?) of fast food establishments, but those probably wouldn’t get past the bomb squad.
Picking the proper day presents problems as well. New Year’s Day and Groundhog’s Day already have enough going on, which eliminates, say, One-One or Two-Two. Anyway, we need more holidays in the middle of the year, when we’re kind of low on days for decorating and baking. (Dibs on the production of gingerbread outhouses for the holiday. It may seem greedy, but I will let YOU produce the strings of lights in the shape of porcelain fixtures.)
E. Irvin Scott, probably the father of the toilet paper roll, was born on May 4, which is a too close to Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, and perhaps we are getting too far into the Pumpkin Spice holidays with September 28, birthdate of the apparent inventor of the flush toilet, the perfectly named Thomas Crapper. I would, myself, pick August 4, the birthdate of Sir John hartrington, perhaps an ancestor of mine, best known for his heroic potty verse, The metamorphosis of Ajax. I know this will annoy people in Iowa, who are at that point preparing the wild ruckus that accompanies the birthday of Herbert Hoover on August 10, but there ARE 49 other states. (It’s also close to my aforementioned grandmother’s birthday, come to think of it, but maybe she wouldn’t mind.)
I know this holiday faces an uphill battle. It quite spoils a traditional American prank if people tp their houses on purpose every August fourth. And decorating your average public restroom these days may well limit the access to paper towels (I never see the sign telling me how the dispenser works until I’ve tried five other methods unsuccessfully: bright lights and garlands of tissue will make this worse.) But think of the radio stations which can pull out classics like “Let Me Go, Lover” for holiday playlists. And consider all those malls that will HAVE to send the janitors in to clean up at least once a year. This is a holiday the world needs. Ready to go? Okay, I’ll wait ‘til you come back.
Blogsy Babbles 