Around The World in Fifty Flushes

When I was in elementary school, my sister in-law, Rhonda, wrote a college paper entitled, “How to Flush a Toilet in Europe.” I thought it was SO funny, mostly because she used the word, “toilet,” in the title, but also because I couldn’t imagine flushing a toilet any differently than the way I did at my parent’s house.

As I began to travel, I saw that she was right and that in different countries, there are different bathroom customs. In Bolivia, the toilet was a hole in the ground and when I was finished, I just kicked dirt in it. In India, some places didn’t use toilet paper and I had to fill a bucket up with water and balance myself while I poured it down my backside. And in France, the toilet is often in a different room from the bathtub or even the sink.

Recently here in Switzerland, I experienced something else new. It was in the bathroom of my favorite coffee shop, Bar Tabac. Right on the wall, next to the roll of toilet paper was a dispenser for, “Seat Cleaning Foam.”

Since I am a big advocate of the expression, “When in Rome,” I tried the stuff. The Swiss are known for being very clean, so it shouldn’t have surprised me to find seat cleaning foam. What did surprise me, however, was that the foam was peach scented.

I hadn’t wiped the seat well enough so when I sat down, it was a little wet. At first it felt weird, but I got used to it and felt a little bit at ease knowing that the seat was clean. It didn’t burn like I thought it would, but was a little sticky.

As I sat there, I imagined what it would be like if humans were like dogs and smelled each other’s backsides. I laughed a little when I thought of some stranger smelling me and then standing up and saying, “Wow! That smells great! What is that, peach?”

I only sat there for a few seconds because my sole purpose was to test the seat cleaning foam. When I felt I had enough information, I pulled my pants back up. I was about to head back to my apartment when I noticed that my shoes were untied and so I sat back down on the seat and tied them.

When I arrived at the apartment, Heather asked me, “What’s that on your pants?”

“I don’t know,” I answered as I turned around and saw wet marks on my chinos.

When I saw the marks, it occurred to me that when I had sat down on the toilet seat to tie my shoes, that the seat was still a little wet. I felt like a teenage boy who’d been caught smoking in the high school bathroom, but wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

“Oh,” I said. “I must have sat in something.”

“Did you put on some peach moisturizer or lotion?”

I took a whiff and sure enough, I smelled like the seat cleaning foam.

I didn’t know which was worse; telling her that I was trying out seat cleaning foam or that I used peach moisturizer. I improvised.

“Soap. There was some soap at the coffee shop and it must have been scented.”

Although it took a couple of washings to get the scent of peach out of the seat of my pants, I don’t regret my experiment. Now, whenever I enter a bathroom, I will look for all the things that make it different from the one I use at home. Hopefully one day, I will have enough information to write a part two to Rhonda’s paper, entitled, “Around the World in Fifty Flushes.”