After a
bike ride on the trail the other day I used a port-a-potty at the edge of the
parking lot. There were two identical plastic enclosures on the wall. One held
toilet paper, the other you couldn’t see what was inside and it had a padlock
on it with a message “Do Not Remove”. Made me wonder what exactly was in the
plastic case. Is this where they keep the “good” toilet paper? You know, like
when you were a kid and Mom always had the “good” china and silverware you only
used on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Imagine
the Queen of England
visiting our area and during a tour of the local farmland and hoi polloi,
nature calls to her. She stops in at the trail station and one of her retinue
announces
“The Queen
requires to drop a deuce. Please issue your finest papier toilette.”
Some
maintenance man named Butch with a six day growth of beard and wearing a
t-shirt stained with wing sauce steps forward.
“Uh,
yessir. Give me, uh, one minute.”
Butch
pulls a flap of skin away from his left ear and slips out a small key made of
cut crystal. He steps into the port-a-potty, opens the padlock and lifts out a
roll of 34-ply toilet paper flecked with specks of gold. He sits the roll on a
shelf. It begins playing a Debussy piano concerto. The tube inside, made of
wood taken from the limb of a 1000 year old tree in the Schwarzwald of Baden-Wurttemberg,
sprays the area with jasmine scented mist.
Also in
the container is a hermetically sealed jar containing butterflies, the laughter
of small children and light captured from supernova SN 1006.
Butch removes the lid and the portable bathroom becomes incandescent and
pastoral. A privy fit for royalty.
Then
again, the plastic box might just contain some back-up rolls of Joe’s 1-Ply
Shitter Paper.