My initial reaction was "wtf it's not even about modeling," until I realized this meant PEOPLE WERE ACTUALLY READING THIS THING WHAT ARE YOU DOING
And so...
In my earlier years (I say this as if I'm 45 years old and not still in my "earlier years"...though I feel like I'm not gonna make it past 30 so maybe I'm not that far off), I did sport. And this sport required spandex, like most sports do anymore. Doesn't Tiger even wear some spandex underneath his slacks to help with putting or something? (The fact that I'm using Tiger Woods in a reference about golf is testament to how much I know about golf.)
Anyway, I'm in the middle of playing, and I start to not feel great. My tummy hurts. I don't say it that way to anyone of course, to spare myself from hearing "Why did you just become a 5-year-old girl?" And then probably crying, which would just make them ask it again.
It turns out I needed to go to the bathroom (surprise!). So once I got the opportunity, I casually made my way into the closest one. There were two stalls, a standard-sized space and one of those giant handicapped spots. I chose the giant one, given the emptiness of the room and the length of my legs.
And then I did my business. There's no point in dwelling on this, it was quick and painless and it's not the story.
Just use your imagination. Also is it just me or does this toilet
look like it knows this story and is laughing at me?
The next step is obviously to, ya know, clean up and get back out there.
Except for one little problem-- there's no toilet paper.
None. Not even an empty cardboard roll. There's a plastic holder attached to the side of the stall meant to hold several rolls, and it is totally failing its job.
Now let's go through how actually not-little this problem is.
First, I'm in spandex. There's no just pulling up my drawers and going-- I have to go back out there and compete, and I don't exactly want everyone noticing doo-doo butter spread across my backside loaves. Nor can I sacrifice a pair of underwear for the cause-- I have no underwear, it's just the spandex (school-issued spandex at that, which if ruined wouldn't have been cheap either-- this was before I got paid to wear sunglasses and pout, remember).
After realizing this, there still seems to be a simple solution-- wait until someone enters the next stall, suck up my pride, and ask them to spare a square. Except no one's going into the other stall. A couple of people open the door, step in, and then immediately leave, but no one stays. I assume that means there's no toilet paper in there too, and these guys are intelligently checking beforehand and avoiding my predicament.
It turns out that while this is true-- both stalls lack toilet paper-- the reason everyone is quickly leaving is because the last person to use that stall must've leaned forward a little bit and...well...it's not looking too inviting in there. Which totally ruins my next plan, which was to sneak underneath to that stall and finish up. Instead, not only would I have remained paperless, I also wouldn't have been able to sit down.
My brain then jumps to the idea of grabbing some paper towels from the bathroom and using those. Two problems with this. One is layout of the bathroom in regards to the rest of the building. The entrance to it is -- by some ingenious design-- directly next to the competitive area. That is, opening the door to the bathroom means you can look out and see all of the athletes and spectators...and vice-versa. Were I to wait until the bathroom was empty, then make a mad dash (more of a mad hobble, since I'm unable to pull up my spandex) to grab some paper towels, there is the off-chance that someone could walk into the bathroom and not only see my sad, naked body grasping at a paper-towel dispenser, but also expose that scene to the entire rest of the sporting event.
The second problem: There aren't any paper towels, it's all hand dryers.
I'm pretty much screwed at this point. The time it's taken to run through all these options has brought it closer to when I need to be out there, and even a last ditch yell for help doesn't seem to be materializing. I need out, and fast.
And that is when I notice the floor drain.
Just a normal floor drain, the kind in most public bathrooms meant to stifle the flooding when someone inevitably clogs the toilet or decides it's funny to piss off the janitor on duty. And slapped to this floor drain is a completely soaking wet, not a dry spot on it, who-knows-where-it-came-from, piece of toilet paper.
Yeah.
...
Yeah.
I don't know why it was so wet, I don't think I wanna know why it was so wet, all I know is that once I carefully peeled it off the drain...it became my salvation.
The best part about that story? I've told it dozens of times, and each time I've gotten about the same reaction when I get to the solution I used (some variation of disbelief, disgust, and a squished-up face like they just sucked on a lemon).
...except for my friend Brenneman-- and that's not a changed name so I can also note that this is the same Brenneman who once ordered a Domino's Pizza and they wrote his name down on the box as "Banana Man." One of the greatest pizza stories of all time. He ordered it for "Brenneman," they heard it as Banana Man. (He tried to play it off too, until another friend was like "Is that...is that a Banana Man I see there?")
Anyway, when I get to the part about the soggy toilet paper, Brenneman-- simply, matter-of-factly, without missing a beat-- says:
"Dude, why didn't you just use your socks?"
And that, my friends, is the moral of this story.
