toilet--again?!?

477 words; pic
A fine run today—esp. good because I ran with a friend.  The results of the sprint were excellent, particularly when one considers that I had to skirt around a bunch of people…and the fact that I wasn’t really in the clear until the last 50 meters or so; the pavement was covered with little puddles and patches of ice.

I would like to take this opportunity to describe something unique to the FSU (Former Soviet Union).  It’s the only place I’ve ever seen something with such a peculiar design.  The commode/toilet/унитаз in our apartment is worth a story.
Many of you probably think that I write some gross things. The topic of the next story is gross.



  When a person uses the toilet, their deposit sits on a shelf of porcelain.  When a stick at the top is lifted, water is released and the contents are washed away, but not until the user is faced with the opportunity to examine closely that which has been expelled from their body.  I first came across this design when I was here in 1988, then again in 1992.  In ’92, I was living in a students’ dormitory, sharing a toilet with three other young men.  I’m sure you can imagine that at times some bits of that which is expelled sticks to the porcelain.  Well, in 1992, I was the only one of the four residents who was brave enough or sickened enough to clean the stuff.  After a week or so, I tried to demand that I NOT be forced to clean in this manner.  In answer to a question about how long he was going to leave the disgusting junk in the toilet, another student, from Indiana, said, “I’m not cleaning it.  Yasha will do it.”  I was Yasha.  I used cloth diapers for both of my children.  Without a pause, I cleaned those diapers.  My wife said, “It’s a good thing about having a husband who grew up on a farm.”
I am a firm believer in the idea exposed by the saying, “If it’s yellow, it’s mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.”  This adage concerns toileting.  In an effort to conserve water, people are encouraged to let yellow water stand in the toilet, while flushing other waste.  I sometimes stay with my sister when I am in Des Moines.  She is not a believer in this practice.  After seeing the evidence of my water conservation, she convinced me that if I wanted to be welcome in her home, I should toe the line on the household practice sending everything out of the house immediately.  I will.  Another way to ‘help’ me change my behaviour would have been to install one of aforementioned Soviet toilets.  Even a committed conservationist would be hard pressed to leave anything in such a toilet where everything is plain to see and smell.