By Judy Reiss
Have you ever taken the time to look at your toilet and thought about what a terrific piece of furniture it is? Probably not. But think about it. No longer do you or your loved ones have to fight the elements and trudge from your warm house to spend a little time cold and alone every time you need to do your business. Now you have the privilege of going into a small room that is tastefully decorated so you can do whatever you have to do and wash your hands or even your hair right there in that warm and lovely room,

You might wonder why I would write about such a private piece of our household equipment. Well I have several reasons. One is that I have a new toilet that is built for those of us who have trouble standing up from the regular toilet. Boy, I never knew that there was such a thing and mine was a gift from my husband after I came home from the hospital. Not only that, but mine is just what is considered a medium height. Although I haven’t seen one, I understand that the really tall one makes getting up possible for almost anyone. What a great idea!

But let’s go back to mine and how well it functions, because it really does. When I was recovering and had trouble standing, it was really a Godsend. No one, including me, wants to have to call for help just to get off the toilet and believe me, just the few inches that my toilet has makes it possible. And I love it. Now what this toilet doesn’t do is put its seat down itself.

Now here is the second question that I have today. Actually, it is two questions. We all know that every mother alive spends a lot of time teaching her son to be toilet trained. And what that means is she has to tell her son how to put away his warm and comfy diapers that someone else changes for him and show him how to use the cold and perhaps unfriendly toilet. But that is the civilized way it is! And everybody claps and cheers when he “makes” like a big boy in the toilet. He is now to be in charge of his own eliminations. Oh and how proud we all are.

Now this is my second question. How can it be that this smart and darling boy cannot learn how to #1 put the seat down when he is finished? Of course we can only hope that the other men in his household puts that seat down and is teaching his son or brother by demonstration how this responsible act is done! And #2 is very important to me, as the person who has to clean the bathroom. Now, we all know that the bowl of the toilet is a good size. And if you lift the seat up, it appears even bigger (picking up the seat is very important to the women in the house because it allows them to have a dry seat). Now that we all agree that the toilet bowl is big and easy to see, my question is why can’t men, teenage men and little boys hit that bowl every single time they are using the toilet? As a women, I find that habit of missing and not aiming for the toilet bowl outrageous! I know that women can’t really understand because they don’t have the equipment that men have. But come on! The seat should be up and the bowl is certainly sufficiently large so why can’t every single man hit it and make everyone happy? Maybe if women actually rebelled and made the men clean the bathroom, you would be surprised how quick they would learn!

I don’t know about you but I am so sick of the commercials touting one candidate or another. I don’t care who you are going to vote for but I do care that we are being inundated with absolute nonsense! I would like to see one of the candidates telling us that he or she would eliminate all this foolishness and put our time for the candidates to “run” to about 2 or 3 months! Can you imagine how much money would be saved? And not only money, it would allow us to watch TV programs that we want to watch and not being made brain dead by the repeating of the same old promises that they have no possibility of doing!

Let’s make the whole campaign running very much shorter and the tons of money that will be saved could actually be used for something good. What about this idea, the candidate that raises the most money that will be given to charity will receive the votes of their party? I know that sounds a little strange but I bet if we actually knew the truth we would find that many of the big corporations put so much money into a specific campaign that they are actually helping to buy their candidate! Oh well, I guess we have support whatever we can, like insisting on the toilet seat being put down after use. Not a big rule at all but one that needs to be enforced.

I hope you are having a wonderful summer and that all your rules are being followed. I am still at the Cape for a few more weeks. And that means that I am completely surrounded by young men and boys. And I love every minute of it. But I thank God every day that we are surrounded by woods!