I know you mean well, airport auto flush. You just want to make sure that people flush, so that the rest-room experience is smooth sailing and hiccup free. You’re a smart, self cleaning toilet! Honestly, you’re really something from the future.
But as you know, airport auto-flush, things never work out the way we want them to. The best intentions die slow painful deaths because they are just too idealistic. And technology, you know what the deal with technology is. It sucks.
It’s not all bad, airport auto-flush. My biggest fear as a child was to fall into the toilet while I was on it, and get flushed away to wherever all that went. What would happen, I wondered, if someone pushed that lever when I was on the toilet. Thank God that isn’t happening, I told myself. Just a little “things could be worse, get perspective, G” to my five year old self. But now, airport auto-flush, I fit on the toilet, and I know what it feels like when there is an ongoing flush underneath my bottom, and it is so empowering. Hell, there are toilets that are too small for me, and wish were bigger as I sit on them, and you flush beneath me in those too. So for helping me mock a childhood memory that constantly reminded my five year old self of her mortality, Thank You. You’re my hero.
But other than constantly flushing beneath me as I try to get a minute of peace at the airport so I can remember where I put the aspirin or count change to buy candy, you serve no purpose. Except embarrassing me, obviously. Like you know how when I’m finally done, I want to put my clothes back on, and pick my bags up from the floor and walk to the wash basin in peace, and you still haven’t flushed, and I’m starting to feel that awful, public-restroom stress sweat starting to crawl down my jawline from behind my ear, the stress of someone walking into my unflushed toilet bowl and hating me for it? This is why I cry at airports, airport auto-flush. Because you flush exactly as I walk out, and at this point I’m just so relieved that I cry into the wash basin. People think I’m going through something. “Oh don’t worry, he will call you”, they say. So thanks for that.
I know you were invented to prevent clogged toilets and enable free flowing access to relieve ourselves. I mean, we should worship you. But we don’t remember that we must not flush diapers/tampons/trash/large things/smart phones that do not belong in a toilet. So we go ahead and put them in you. And you’re just not magnanimous enough to flush them, are you. Not the enthusiasm you have in flushing phones, wallets and other things that fall into you.
Image from here
So I walk into the restroom during my layover, hoping for 5 minutes of peace, pretending I’m not traveling, no fights for over-head baggage space, no crying child/sullen teenager next to me; just clean relief, washing my hands, and staring at myself in the mirror and whispering ‘this your travel- fatigue face, this isn’t ageing’ to myself after. But what do I get? 3 clogged toilets because you tried to flush something that will simply not go down, several bottom-splashes with gross toilet liquid, and one experience where a mother and cranky child walk in to my still unflushed toilet.
I don’t want to spend 5 minutes looking for and pressing your flush button and waving my hand in front of your sensor while people wait for me to leave the the cubicle, airport-auto flush. This is 2013, and that is just too much work.
So thanks, but no thanks. Just go home now.
