How Do You Miss A Urinal?

Wow.  I did it!  If this doesn't make me a shoo-in for Grand Flushmaster, I don't know what will...if they let me tell what I know...oh, wait.  You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?

Okay, let me explain....

At the last conclave of the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Chamber Pot (our founders emptied the ones both in King Solomon's chambers and those of his immense harem), I was formally promoted to 34th-Level Janitor, with all rights and responsibilities thereof, including a golden crossed-plunger-and-mop signet ring, an exclusive variant of the secret handshake (always performed while wearing rubber gloves), and a key to the Sacred Supply Closet, should my tasks require more esoteric cleaners than mere Pine-Sol and Toilet Duck.

My main responsibility is to carefully study all of the Seven Janitorial Mysteries, and if possible, find a solution to one of them.

The one that truly bothered me most (although "Just what is that gummy black junk that magically appears on floors and you have to use a razor to scrape it up?!" came close) was "How does a man miss a urinal?"  Because urinals are made to catch all that whizz.  And what could be simpler than to unzip, aim at the porcelain, and shoot?

And yet...guys miss it.  A lot.  If you, too, are a member of the Potsies (as we are commonly called), and you have ever drawn the chore of cleaning a men's restroom, you know exactly what I mean.  At times there is more urine on the walls and the floors than there is in the actual urinal (and I know that because another thing many men can't do is flush), and the really weird thing is that if one man misses the urinal, the next man to use it will not rat out his fellow by telling someone that there is "a mess" in the men's room!  In fact, he will step in said mess and then track it out of the restroom altogether rather than admit that a mess exists!

Which is when I finally got mad as hell and decided to solve that Mystery once and for all.

And that's where we came in.  Because, by golly, I solved it!

First of all, in a few cases, there is no Mystery.  Old men get a bit shaky as they age, so it's no wonder that they miss.  Little boys often can't aim high enough (though why a parent isn't there to help them is yet another Mystery), so they'll probably miss, too.  And if a man has a disability, well, yeah.

But the guys I'm talking about are the healthy, young-to-middle-aged men who should have no trouble with either their personal equipment or the porcelain fixtures graciously provided for them by numerous establishments across this wonderful nation (even modern Porta-Johns have urinals!  Is this a great country or what?!).  Connecting the two should be as easy as 1, 2, 3...or at least 1.  And yet, the messes continue to appear, and if we Potsies weren't there to scrub them away, the liquid would keep growing deeper, the smell would be declared a poison gas, and the uric acid would eventually eat through the tile and stain the ceilings of the floor below.  Now why would any thinking man want this?

My first thought was that these men don't think.  But that's not true.  Many of these men are clever.  Some of them are hunters, which I really don't get--you can hit a deer at a hundred yards with a rifle, but not a urinal at half a yard with your own willy?  Please!

But one day I was reading about the scent-marking habits of various furred animals in the wild--such as wolves and dogs, as well as cats both domestic and wild--and I got it.

The men miss on purpose!

And they're doing it for the same reasons that your dog sniffs and marks every tree, bush and post on his "walkies," or your cat grimaces over the used sofa you bought, then raises his tail and sprays it...they're communicating.

We ladies have long known that men don't like to verbalize.  If we try to get them to do it, they grunt a bit, hide behind their newspapers, and stuff their faces with food.  If we go too far, they retreat into their Man Caves and watch sports, which involves as its main means of communication teams wearing pictorial icons and numbers, more numbers indicating that a team has accomplished something, and gestures from officials watching to make sure a team doesn't break the rules.

But men still have things to say to other men;  so they use the Sacred Male Urine Code.  All we women smell when a man urinates is "pee-yew!"  But to another man, it's like a Facebook entry.  In fact, it's just like what your dog smells when he's got his whole head buried in the neighbor's wisteria vine--he can tell who's been there, what they ate for dinner, how healthy they are, and even some emotional cues.

And men can tell the same.  Who got the promotion, who's dating whom, who got food poisoning from that new restaurant, who's moving to Alaska...it's all there in those nasty yellow droplets and puddles.  Which is why the next man in line tries to track it out with him--to make sure some other man can scent-read the messages before the blasted Potsies clean them up!

So there you have it.  Mystery solved.  Of course, now I'm in terrible danger, both from acolytes of the SMUC and the Potsies.  You see, revealing secrets from the 34th Level to outsiders carries the punishment of having a thousand paper cuts applied to one's hands and bare feet, then having them dipped in Purell.  Yikes.  So I won't be going to our next conclave;  instead, I will mail my solution from an undisclosed post office box and find some wilderness to hide out in until I receive notice that all is forgiven.

And with a solution this brilliant, they'll forgive me.  Guaranteed.