Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
There’s a silent battle being waged in the ongoing war between the sexes. I’m here to shed some golden light on this fight because men, we’re losing. It’s time to stand up. Stand up and pee.
In every old neighborhood, new condominimum complex and trailer park in America, wives have forced their husbands to sit and pee. A few bad apples in the aim-control department have started spoiling it for us all. But the ramifications stagger the mind.
What’s next? A ban on ear hair? An end to “Girls Gone Wild” videos and their fake lesbian love action? A requirement to always wear matching socks?
No. That’s not going to happen. Because guys, you’re going stand up and take matters into your own hands. Stop this nonsense. Now. And read this essay I found, because I couldn’t have said it better.
Advice to Men Who Sit Down to Pee Out of Consideration For Their Wives
By Rocco de Giacomo
Pull your pants up.
Don’t wash your hands, they’re fine.
Get your car keys from your daughter: it’s time go.
Tell your wife you’re just going out for more Orange Pekoe.
Take the highway north, out of town.
At the first exit you see where the road name is a concession, get off.
Start heading west on the concession road until it turns to gravel.
When you see a big oak tree standing in the middle of a field, pull over.
Turn off the ignition, get out of the car, climb over the fence, and start running towards it.
Fall down.
Scrape up your knees.
Dirty your shoes.
Let thistles and burrs catch on your laces and pant cuffs.
When you come to the tree, start climbing.
If you cut your hands on the way up, good.
When you reach the top, the upper branches should sway under your weight. At this point, try to recall at time and place when death was merely a friend who’d get you in trouble with your folks.
(If you have trouble remembering, shuffle out further and further along the branch until you hear
a crack. This should jar your memory.)
As you climb down, notice the way your limbs shake, with having done something so reckless,
without any consideration for others, and how your stomach, your bowels exult from doing it.
(If you slip and fall and crack your head, so that you need stitches, even better.)
When you reach the ground, don’t examine yourself for cuts and bruises.
Walk, like you once did, with the satisfaction of knowing that they are there, and not doing a
thing to tend to them.
By this point, you should be aware of a hearty resilience returning to your spine, and a sharp temerity that separates what is important, what is not, and what can grind you down, given the chance.
Keep walking, around you is the territory that you need to reclaim, and in it the reckless boy, hounded, banished here by comfort and love.
This is the link to the essay writer. Thank you, Rocco.
This is the link to the column that I found that got me started on this.
This is Fark.
For you wicked wives, here is your link.
Of course, one doesn’t consciously remember the events of young life that so shape our current habits and idiosyncracies, but I do recall my father saying to me, "Players with short bats should stand close to home plate." I am not sure of the context of the remark.
wow… ken singleton, huh? i’m impressed.
my big celebrity pee? judge reinhold, at the cinerama dome theater on sunset blvd. during a showing of the director’s cut of "the wild bunch".
i didn’t peek, but i have a strange feeling that he might have…
actually a well know radio personality first told me about micturation syncope.
Interesting how this topic gets more ation than any other.
First of all – hasn’t feminism come far enough that women can take responsibility for whether the seat is up or down? I am not going to enable the dominant paternalistic paradigm by withholding from women the expectation that they know how to keep their own backsides dry.
Secondly – Peeing whilst seated is a neater, more controlled way to evacuate the bladder. No splashing, no missing, none of that twin stream horror described by syntax. However, I, like most other men, truly enjoy the babbling fountain sound of urine sriking porcelain waters.
Good God. There’s a frickin’ syndrome for everything these days, isn’t there Catnap? I figure if you get up in the middle of the night to pee, you’ve got the urge, so where’s the "straining" part come in?
Thanks for fueling the fire for the other side, Catnap. "There’s a syndrome for that" is all a woman needs to hear before laying down the law.
On the other hand, thank you for the insightful comments on you and Ken Singleton. I’ve never had a Hall of Fame pee.
OMG, Catnap. That has happened to E-spouse. He literally passed out and hit his head on the toilet. That’s it. Yes to sitting down. Now I do care. Micturation syncope would be a horrible way to die.
You know Ash, there is a syndrome or something that can cause a guy to faint while taking a midnight potty break. It’s called micturition syncope. You are especially vulnerable if straining. So, having a seat at night might not be a bad idea.
I was recently at a college football game with 79,999 other people. Most of whom needed to piss when I did. They had trough style urinals and everybody was standing – it still took a long time.
Speaking of urinating next to people. I once took a leak while standing next to Hall of Famer Ken Singleton.
Yes, were were in a bathroom.
No, I didn’t get a look at his bat and balls.
Yes, I tried to.
Pissing contest, boys?
ya’ll crack me up…
true, there’s no feeling that quite compares to a nice, satisfying "number one" standing before a toilet, the sound of the uric stream shattering the silence as it splashes inside the bowl…
but try to imagine this situation: you haven’t been to the laundromat in a while, you’re out of clean underwear, and you’ve worn every pair of jeans you own seven times. all you have to cover your nethers is an old pair of sweatpants. you’re at a friend’s house drinking a few beers. after a while, you feel an urge. you walk down the hallway into the bathroom, shutting the door behind you. as you begin that magical process that is peeing proudly like a man, you realize after standing there for five seconds or so that a piece of lint from the crotch of your sweatpants has lodged itself in such a way that causes the expected stream to split off into two streams, each landing on either side of the bowl and missing their targets completely.
in a state of panic, you reach for a nice wad of bathroom tissue, only to find that there isn’t enough left to mop up your mess. there are no auxillary rolls of tp under the sink.
what do you do? how do you explain that to your host?
see, if you had just let go of this preoccupation with peeing standing up, this wouldn’t have become an issue.
So why is it PC to pee seated? Since when is it anti-evolutionary (Comrade) to stand proudly holding one’s pride? Did I miss a memo while I was living in San Francisco? I filed all the right changes of address forms with the People’s Soviet of Berkeley and the Bay. Tavorisch Newsome shall hear about this!
E-Spouse – show me where I said "never" and get back to me. There’s nothing stifling about a free willy. And I didn’t know this was going to get political, but you’re right – Republicans are squatters.
This is not a matter of building a better mousetrap. It’s a matter of manhood.
Spelling it out for you, E, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam I Must Sit Down to Pee. Lift your hairy ass up off the throne and see a man about a horse.
Ash —
It is your absolutist, polarizing "NEVER do this" language that is stifling the evolution of humanity, locking us into dumb-ass Ronald Reagen black/white thinking. I get to piss (not "pee") off my back porch, drench the raspberry patch in the back yard, and whip it out when I want, but when it is 3am and the evening’s beers want out, I can proudly name myself amongst the innovators who will keep the light off, do a 180, plop down my fat hairy ass down on the porcelain, groan, and let loose with pride. Simply put, Ash, sitting down to piss at 3am is just a better way to do it, kinda like when we figured out to put wheels on our luggage. Not gonna save humanity, but worth defending against closed-minded idealogues like yourself.
— Enviro-spouse
EM said: "I really don’t care…"
Victory! It’s hand-to-penis combat out there, boys. One down, 5 million to go…
or I will get wicked on your ass…
Ash, porcelain.
Please stop messing with my husband training. You dog.
I really don’t care either way, as long as you don’t sprinkle or leave the toilet seat up.
I like your strategy, Tea.
Yes Huw! This war of porcelain proportions is being played out everywhere. Amazing. At work several years ago, one married guy copped to sitting down to pee because the wife said so, and we gave him holy hell. All he could do was, well… sit. And take it.
At work a woman posted a sign in the unisex washroom: men, please put the seat down. A mischief-maker who shall remain nameless replaced it with a sign asking the fairer sex for their own safety to please return the seat to its upright and locked position.
LOL!That’s great, Ash.
I prefer to hand over a sponge and spray bleach after dropping a few not-so-subtle hints of non-approval.