Saturday, October 16, 2010

What Do Women Want?

I do not understand the behavior of women in public restrooms. I’m an in-and-out kind of girl, because public restrooms are fucking gross. They smell weird and tend to be covered with mysterious liquids and pubic hair, and they’re not especially interesting unless there’s some pretty excellent graffiti. Not only that, peeing isn’t a really involved activity. You pull down your pants, take a seat and let loose. After a quick wipe and a flush, it’s over. This process should take no more than 30 seconds, even if you’ve recently consumed coffee or beer, and yet women routinely pass the one minute mark.

Propriety makes gaining insight into the potty habits of other women somewhat challenging, so all I really have to go on is what I hear in public restrooms. This is what I’ve deduced:

1. Women’s pants are complex enough that the average woman doesn’t possess the technical skills required to remove them quickly and easily. I personally have not found women’s pants to be particularly tricky, but I might just be good with zippers.

2. Women have yet to realize that the act of adorning a seat with toilet paper is futile. Not only are public bathrooms universally stocked with useless ¼-ply toilet paper, but you can’t get AIDS from sitting on a toilet to begin with. This particular female compulsion eats up somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds, variations in time being accounted for by variations in compulsivity.

3. Women are messy pissers. I base this on the average amount of toilet paper I hear being pulled from the roll, as well as the vigor with which I hear it used. You might think that peeing would require nothing more than one quick wipe, but this is clearly not so.

Other things I don’t understand about women:

Their attraction to flowers; jewelry; shopping; movies starring Julia Roberts; girl-talk.

Their poor map-reading, math, and driving skills. A stereotype, but absolutely true. Sharpen up, ladies.

Their inability to quickly and purposefully approach the point-of-purchase at a store, pay, and get the fuck out. Retrieve your wallet from the depths of your massive bag while you’re in line, NOT once you’re at the register. By the same token, don’t hang out at the register post-payment. I’m not suggesting you forgo putting change in your wallet, replacing your credit card, and rearranging the contents of your purse. I’m suggesting you do it elsewhere.

On a related note, their obsession with purses is positively baffling. Purses are nothing but a means of transporting your shit from one place to another. They need not coordinate with your outfit.

Their drive to create real or imagined dramas. Why strive for a life of pain and hardship? Isn’t the world nasty enough as it is?