Peeing with Paulo

If they really wanted to make it easier for our bladders to let go, they should have put up huge pictures of waterfalls.  Or pictures of huge waterfalls, for those who have particular difficulty going with the flow.  The Niagara.

In restrooms all over NAIA Centennial Terminal, inspirational quotes are hung over urinals.  It’s like Paulo Coelho wagging his finger at you while you’re trying to hold your own, so to speak, or — if you’re among the lucky ones — finally done with it, and wagging success with your fingers.

But Paulo Coelho is for a different kind of rut, like when you don’t know what to say on Twitter.  For help with what doctors call, shyly, “urinary hesitancy”, I believe words — even if they tell you it’s your destiny to be right there at that particular urinal at that particular juncture in time — hardly work.  Pictures are better.

Better yet, sounds. Restrooms should pipe in ambient sounds as a mandatory accessibility feature, right up there with handle bars.  Especially those that approximate the shwishing sound your mother made when she tried to coax your hesitant stream when you were a child.

I still remember those shwishing sounds.  I can still hear them now.  And now I really have to go. . .