Yesterday morning I stepped into the bathroom onto a damp bath mat. This was curious, since I’d last taken a shower 2 days earlier. A sniff suggested the cause. Actually, it was a little more forceful than a suggestion, nasally speaking.
There is a scene in the Swedish movie “A Song for Martin” in which Martin, the symphony conductor now suffering from Alzheimer’s, excuses himself from a restaurant table and takes a pee in a potted plant. Things like this come to mind. Especially after this morning. I was doing sink business at the sink and Jeff came into the bathroom. He stood on the (clean) bath mat and faced the shower. “What are you looking for?” I asked. “I’m waiting for a turn,” he said. “A turn for what?” I asked. “A turn to pee,” he said. I showed him a better target.
This is a reminder of the fact that much of what we humans do is not really in our nature. We train ourselves and our children. Cats are more natural than humans at getting with the bathroom hygiene program. (Well, not my cats in particular depending on which of them you’re asking about, but cats in general.) Anyway, I recall that Jeff is not the only person I can think of with a declining mind who has selected a bath mat as a likely patch for business. And why not a potted plant, if you stop and think about it. I used to have a cat who thought likewise.
1 comment:
When I was a student I had a potted plant. It was a phildodendron, or a Monstera Deliciosa, depending on which book you subscribed to. It was a big plant, and had a big pot. In a flat shared by six students, the wait for the loo was sometimes long. The potted plant did sterling duty. It never smelled bad. I wasn't the only one that used it.
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