Sewer snakes

Bathrooms are evil. I have huge issues with them and I just can't help it.  Public restrooms are the worst, especially if other people are in there at the same time.  When I'm standing up at a urinal, if there's someone else standing next to me?  I CANNOT PEE.  I could stand there all day, but as long as someone else is there, no pee is coming out.  I'm pretty sure my bladder would explode before I could pee.

But that's just a fun fact.  What I really want to stress is how my fear of bathrooms came into being.  This is the first of two posts which will explore the utter terror I felt as a child simply by walking into a bathroom.

One day, I was innocently eating a bowl of Grape Nuts because I thought they were cool for some retarded reason that escapes me. Perhaps I believed they would actually taste like a combination of grapes and peanuts, and I imagined it being like a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, just with milk instead of bread.

In any case, I was chewing a mouthful of milk-soaked dog food and sitting at the kitchen table, kicking my little legs back and forth and resembling a cherub.  My sister was sitting as far from me as she could while still being considered "at the table" and kept eying my cereal suspiciously.  From the looks she gave the bowl, it was as if she thought the milk might spring from the bowl at any moment and try to force itself upon her, or somehow sneak down her throat via some kind of anti-gravity osmosis.  She's allergic to milk, and back in those early days her tiny brain couldn't comprehend that being NEAR milk wouldn't kill her.  

While she stayed alert for milk terrorists, my father came into the kitchen holding the newspaper and started telling us about some story that he had read.  Normally I didn't pay attention when he talked about the news.  News was for lesser beings and it was boooooring.  If only I had ignored this story, all else might have been prevented.  Maybe I could have been a normal human being and retained my ability to pee in public...but it wasn't to be.

My father sat down at the table with us and, ignoring his food, launched into the scariest story ever.  It started out boring like any normal news article--"Apparently, there was some woman"--some woman indeed.  I began to turn on my ignore-powers when the news story took a drastic (and horrifying) turn.  "She was sitting on the toilet, minding her own business (lol!pun) when suddenly, she felt something poking her...from beneath!"  

That was it.  I was enraptured.  Had this woman accidentally given birth into a toilet? Was her feces seeking revenge?  My mind danced with all the hilarious things that could have been in her toilet.  How naive I was...

My father continued.  "So she stood up and looked down"--it was the moment of truth--"and there was"--I stared at him, cereal mush slowly sliding down my chin.  The suspense was killing me!  I had to know.

"A snake!"

Oh fucking Christ, no.  I hated snakes.  I'd seen one in the yard once; that was pretty much the last time I'd been able to walk in our backyard without fear.

And of course, as if it had been waiting for just the right moment, my body told me that it was time for me to use the bathroom.  And from that moment on, until my late teens, every time I sat on a toilet I was certain that snakes were going to come shooting out of it like machine gun fire.  The snakes would rip me apart, starting with my poor, exposed buttocks, and then move on to kill the rest of my family, all because I didn't flush the damn toilet quickly enough.

And thus it was that my childhood belief that bathrooms were safe, innocent places was shattered.  I knew then (as I know now) that bathrooms are evil. And that if you didn't flush the toilet quickly enough?  You. Would. Die.