On an overly exuberant toilet…

This post’s title is literal. I was on such a toilet.

I hate overly exuberant auto-flushing toilets.  While attending a conference this week, I used my 15-minute breaks between workshops to use the bathroom and find the one water station destined to serve the thousands in attendance, lugging my suitcase with me because the conference refused to check bags on the second day though it had the first. (I had arrived from the airport to go straight to the conference and would leave from the conference to go directly to the airport. Knowing this, I had checked with conference staff prior to the event to ask if I would be able to check luggage. I got a resounding “yes, not a problem at all.” However, it was a problem. For me.) Sigh. Yes, I’m a bit bitter plus suffering from a bad back, and so hoisting a suitcase, even one on wheels, through a maze of networking people and vendors to reach my seat of choice (i.e. one with enough space for my suitcase too) in the workshop of my choice for each of the 11 times slotted for presentations on Day 2… well, it didn’t make me happy. But I digress.

I hate overly exuberant auto-flushing toilets. I admit I have gotten to the place in life where I expect a toilet to flush automatically as I raise myself from its porcelain pristineness. Except at home. And not necessarily because I am not raising myself from porcelain pristineness. (I live with men and our toilets are pristine only in the short interim between cleaning and using them. Frankly, all the hubbub surrounding transgenders and bathrooms is probably a result of men wanting out of the men’s restroom into something cleaner. Which probably explains the long lines.) At home and in the hotel, I had to manually flush the toilet, but at work, in the airport, and at this conference, toilets flushed automatically. Like a great “hurrah!” for using the potty. Could be great for potty training. Instant reward; no candy necessary to bribe a child to give up diapers.

Unless a toilet acted like the one in the stall I chose at the conference. This auto-flushing toilet flushed five times while I sat on it, and I was not on it long. It was like sitting on a bidet. I think (since I have never used one). Or maybe, more likely, a butt mister. Because each time it flushed, it spritzed water on my butt. Which made me feel much better about the times I had failed to check the toilet seat and found myself sitting in something wet and imagined something much worse than exuberant flushing mist.

Of course, when I finished using the toilet, blotted the mist off my rear end and got up to leave, the exuberant auto-flushing commode lost its enthusiasm for its job. It didn’t flush. I sat back down and stood back up. I opened and then closed the door. I exuberantly sat back down, pretended to use the toilet, and stood back up. No response from the porcelain enthusiast. I waved my hand in front of what I assumed was the mechanism that triggered the flushing. No flush. As a last resort, I pressed anything that looked remotely like a magic button so I could manually flush. Nada.

And so I walked away, realizing that far worse than an exuberant auto-flushing toilet is a toilet that won’t flush at all.