I’m watching “Married with Children” (I don’t have cable & I’m sick) and they made a joke about men missing the toilet when they pee.
Now, I’ve lived with boys & men my whole life and I’ve never had pee on the toilet seat or pee on the floor.
But I’ve heard other women make this comment about sons and husbands, and when I babysat, at least two of the boys I took care of had been toilet trained to sit down because their moms swore that they were sick of cleaning up after man-pee.
Tom and I have talked about it and he doesn’t get it either.
First of all, if these guys are peeing all over everything, why aren’t THEY cleaning up after themselves?
Second of all, maybe they can’t hit the toilet because they weren’t potty traied to pee standing up. Good habits start early.
I’m just saying.
Sam sits to pee. He’s tried to stand but can’t make it over the lip of the toilet. (He won’t pee on a potty, only on the toilet.) He’s average potty training age (I think) and just beginning, after months of practicing, to be able to aim. So I think it’s a little unrealistic to say boys should be trained to stand – in fact, I suspect that if boys were trained to sit, there would be no problems at all, because if you’re not standing you can’t miss.
I really hate the word trained. Also it is 8:30 in the morning and I am drinking a beer, so it’s possible nothing I’ve said makes any sense.
Also, this never showed up in Google Reader.
Yeah, my RSS is only half-working.
Maybe it’s mild penis-envy, but I think peeing standing up is probably the best thing about being a guy and I think it should be encouraged, along with proper cleaning etiquette.
Consider the word “trained” in any instance in which I use it to be a short substitute for “learned to do.”
But what I really want to know is if other people find that grown men pee all over everything in the bathroom (peeing in the shower doesn’t count for my purposes)? Because I just don’t find it to be true.
I know two grown men who apparently have bad aim and/or don’t know where they’re shaking it afterward, because I always have to clean drips off the floor after they’ve been over to visit and used my bathroom.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I’ve never lived with any man who had any problem with peeing on the floor. BUT. When our house was filled with contractors and workmen all the time, it was a serious problem. Especially at first, before we moved in — since we weren’t here regularly to clean, when we would stop by to check on things, the brand new tile floor (and grout) around the toilet would be DISGUSTING. I really hated those pigs, and I hated my mother-in-law for insisting on tile floors. If am forced to clean the piss of strange men off my floors, I would really prefer a nice smooth floor with no grout or the like.
My husband sits to pee – always has. No mess and the extra 20 seconds of unbuttoning and shuffling and whatever doesn’t bother him.
Our youngest (5) sits most of the time. We constantly remind him to sit, though.
The older two (9 and 11) do not sit, ever, and there is piss all over the place. They rotted out the hinges on the toilet seat by peeing on it. They’ve wrecked the laminate flooring in the bathroom by… yep, peeing on it. They peed on THE WALL.
We’ve talked to them about peeing sitting down – they refuse (“That’s dumb”). We’ve made THEM clean the bathroom (fine, but it then needs to be done daily because there’s fresh pee every day). For a while, the bathroom in the kids’ part of the house smelled like a litter box or a hamster cage – until I literally started the “once a month” scrub with TSP. Walls and all.
If it were up to me, I’d have all of them sit. They can stand elsewhere – either school, friends’ houses, when they get their own apartment.. whatever! But since we adopted them as older kids, it’s not something I have much control over. Sadly.
Violet, I really feel for you. But PEEING STANDING UP HAS GOT TO BE THE MOST AWESOME THING EVAR!
;^)
Here’s the thing – *I* can actually pee standing up! But clearly the boys, with their wangs and their easily-distracted-brains, are not able.
Uh, since my last comment Sam has peed standing up about 90% of the time.
Annika, that is hilarious. And awesome that he is using the potty!
I THINK HE READS YOUR BLOG. Seriously, it was like THAT DAY that he switched.
My theory is that the farther away from the bowl one gets, the more splatter happens. This is only based on my own experience, as I don’t sit on public toilets, and the amount of pee splatter is inversely proportional to the depth of my squat. But if you compare penises and toilets with garden hoses and buckets, I think you’ll understand what I mean.