Toilets Confuse Me…Again
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
reetings to all my bloggy-friends from lovely Johannesburg, South Africa. I’m sure that some of you were hoping for a photo-blog posting of the sights here, but I’ll have to disappoint you. Other than Nelson Mandela Square shot with my iPhone, I haven’t even taken out The Precious for any sightseeing. Maybe tomorrow. But for tonight I’m writing for someone to help me with my latest scat repository bewilderment.
Maybe I’m not too bright.
Maybe I just overthink these things.
Maybe I’m just not supposed to use the potty outside the US…but once again, I’m having toilet confusion.
I’m embarrassed to admit that this is my third entry in the ex-US toileting confusion series. The first time was in 2006 when I shared my puzzlement about the protocol for using the bidet. The next time it was my 2007 trip to China where I was madly confused about why I was supposed to pee on the orchids. This time, however, it’s about the secret workings of these nonsensical non-US toilets.
Wait, wait, wait. Let me clarify. I am not confused by the what goes where part. That is pretty idiot-proof.
See? I even managed to label the pee-pee and poopy depository in this photo from my hotel bathroom. So from my handy-dandy labeled image you can see that the toilet bowl is pretty obvious (though it does lack the proper quantity of water that I prefer). It is the flushing apparatus that has left me head-scratching. I mean come on. The toilets that I’m used to have one flushing lever: one! This one has two individual flushing buttons of disparate sizes that work individually and in concert. But why? What is the rationale here? I must sort this out.
One option that I’ve considered is the variation in flush size hypothesis, depicted here:
That would be slick, right? You’d vary your flush size based on how much, uh, waste you were trying to get rid of. Of course, without any measuring apparatus, I am unable to validate this hypothesis properly. And visually, well, toilet flushing is toilet flushing. I’m not the Rainman of toilet water swirl patterns, you know.
The next hypothesis is a variant of the first. This theory reserves the smaller button for pee-pee, the larger button for poopy, and the two together for every-orifice crisis time as depicted thusly:
Again, sounds eminently plausible, but I’ve found that the two buttons together do not produce the tsunami of toilet water I’d expect would be needed for the multi-orifice crisis and I suspect that the yuck brush would still end up needing to be employed. This is indeed bothersome.
The last theory is what I suspect is the true answer. I’ve diagrammed it here:
My suspicion is that all of these buttons do the exact same thing. Why they were made different sizes and able to be pushed at the same time is mainly, in my not so humble opinion, to screw with my head! After all, it’s a freaking toilet. All it’s supposed to do is flush, not dance the hokey-pokey.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen…my toilet flusher analysis in a nutshell. Three buttons…one function…but designed to cause confusion in overthinkers like myself.
Now who dares tell me different?!