But before I explain what it is, two quick things:
1) Opening night was fantastic. The crowd seemed to really love what Neil, Krista, Meg, Shayna, Luke, Ben, and the rest of the crew put together, and how the cast played it out. It seriously exceeded the expectations of my far-too-optimistic imagination, which is saying a lot.
2) To anybody that was at our opening night and looked through the program, I want to correct a horrendous oversight of mine. In the rush of things, I forgot to give credit where it was due to one of my roommates and close friends, Cristina Diaz-Borda, for all of her help in keeping me sane and picking up my slack (which can often be quite a bit), especially with the show. She should have been credited as “Production Assistant” as well as “Graphic Design” for her dual roles in maintaining-my-sanity and making-a-kickass-poster/logo-image. So start clapping.
And now the contest:
When I stepped out of the hall today for intermission, bladder ready-to-explode, I was greeted with a surprisingly long line at the bathroom, and it got me thinking… what was my worst bathroom experience ever?
I’ve got a pair of VIP tickets for any show in our second week (February 11-14, pending availability) for whoever tells me the funniest/weirdest/worst/awe-inspiringly-terrible — and true — bathroom experience they’ve ever had.
I guess I can also give two runner-up prizes of VIP tickets for the Wednesday show too, if you really want.
All you need to do to enter is leave your experience as a comment on this post, or even write something on your own blog and link it back here (so’s I can be notified).
And… go! I’ll email the winners on… Monday evening, I guess? And I’ll announce them here, too.
13 Responses
February 6th, 2009 at 3:10 am
I have many funny toilet stories…I seem to find toilets of the world quite intriguing which adds an oomph to my repertoire…you could call me a ‘toilet connoisseur’.
On route to South East Asia, we stopped in the glorious Singaporean airport-one of the coolest places I’ve ever been–now to set the scene, I was traveling had multiple bags strapped and slung over my shoulders and waist and so going to the bathroom was, as you know my fellow travelers, not an easy feat.
Nevertheless, Mother Nature screamed louder than the Jewish mothering voice in my head that said in a not so motherly way: “don’t take all this crap off your back just to whiz”. So alas, I entered into the washroom and all I see is this hole in the floor, a porcelain hole granted, but a hole and a shower head -no toilet paper just a good old ‘douche yourself’ shower head. Apart from questioning the sanitation of the whole ordeal I schlepped all the stuff off of my back on to the floor beside me (to not leave my bags unattended) crouched down atop the hole and peed as accurately as i could (AHHH RELIEF!) Anyway, I turn on the shower head to cleanse and it goes crazy. RESULT: I come out of the stall soaked (bags soaked too) just to see two natives of the country giggling at me…why you ask? Well the good ol’ American toilet was sitting right in the stall next door! Turns out there are two kinds one for the native folk and one for the ignorant traveler!
Lesson: check all stalls involved–it will prevent you coming out looking like you magically peed all over yourself and from having to sit on a plane wet for another 6 hours.
PS the toilet experience after that had no paper either and the sign outside said “leave your gun at the door!” (Philippines)
February 6th, 2009 at 6:23 am
Well, I have a great bathroom story, but unfortunately, it involves you…and Lana Cooney. Let’s just relegate it to memory and let someone else get the tickets. Can’t wait to see the show next Thursday!
February 6th, 2009 at 6:44 am
It’s funny that this contest about bathroom stories came up since one just happened to me quite recently. I went to a Raptors game (to see them lose once more unfortunately) and after the game, I put on my jacket and scarf hanging around my neck and went to the crowded urinals. After wedging myself at a urinal between two fat drunk guys I let the stream go. Unfortunately afterwords I had looked down and noticed my scarf dangling in front of me completely drenched in what I had just unleashed. I then had to spend the afternoon driving home with this thing smelling up my car.
(hey i couldn’t throw it out, it’s my favourite scarf!..well..it’s my only scarf..but it’s still pretty awesome!)
And thus, quite the annoying urinal story for the urinetown contest.
P.S. if I win I’ll let you touch the scarf
February 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Well I don’t know if the bathroom story has to pertain to me personally, but I have one in which I am definitely one of the MANY traumatized victims…
So I live on an all-girls floors in rez.. and I don’t want to sound sexist here, but you DO generally EXPECT girls to be a lot cleaner, yes? Well there has been 3 incidents in one of our bathrooms to prove you wrong. (Well up ’til now we still don’t know who did it… we suspect it may be other people from other floors… but yet again you never know!)
Incident I: First it was just a piece of shxt stuck on the toilet seat of the first stall… + an unflushed toilet.
Incident II: Then couple days later after the cleaning ladies already cleaned it, it happened again in the same stall. But this time there was a whole lot SMUDGED all over the toilet seat… like someone used their hand and swiped over it =___=||..
Incident III: Yet again when you least expect it, the shxtter strikes again! And it just gets increasingly worse!! This time was some serious high-velocity shxt as it splashed all over the toilet seat, floor, the bar you step on to flush the toilet… AND THE WALL. Besides being totally grossed out I felt so bad for the cleaning ladies who has to clean this up
Obviously by this point lots of girls put up warning signs and complained to our don so our don sent out a threatening email to whoever that may know the mysterious shxtter… and since then the first stall has been clean and safe… SO FAR.
And since everyone has already witnessed the atrocities that has happened in that stall, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone using that stall again. The first stall used to be my favorite stall too…
LOL.
February 6th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Hi, here’s my contest submission for worst/strangest/life-scarring bathroom experience…
I was at a skating rink in my hometown. Everyone from my class was there — it was a school trip. Although I’m a terrible skater, I was having a great time.
I took a break from the ice to go use the washroom. It took me a little while to find it because I hadn’t gone skating in that arena for years. Luckily though, I was able to track down the women’s washroom. I opened a heavy door, and then another heavier door, and there I was.
So I used the washroom (I won’t get into the details here), and all went well… Washed my hands, dried them off, adjusted my skates and I was ready to head back out onto the ice.
I opened the first heavy door, and as I tried to open that second door, it was stuck. So I pulled harder. And harder and harder. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t just stuck — it was locked. I was locked in! I could still hear the happy yells of my classmates from the arena…
So I figured, if I could hear them, maybe they could hear me. I started shouting and shrieking for someone to let me out. But nobody seemed to hear. After about five minutes, I had convinced myself that I’d never get out, and I would be trapped in this tiny skating rink bathroom for the rest of my life. My eyes started to water and, before I knew it, I was weeping hysterically, like there was no tomorrow.
Thirty minutes later, still in hysterics, I heard a creaking sound to my left. I turned around quickly, ending up face-to-weeping-face with half the girls in my class. I had been banging on the janitor’s closet the whole time. If I had turned my head to the left, I would have seen the actual door.
February 6th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Well. I was in Budapest on a study abroad program and our prof had taken us out for some goulash and beer at a place called the Old Man’s Bar. (If at this point in the story you are reminded of the Goo Goo Dolls, then you’re as big of a dork as I am.) We ate goulash, drank beer and listened to Hungarian jazz. After enough of the beer had been consumed, I naturally took a trip to the washroom.
There was a guy standing at one of the two urinals, and he was humming. I went to use the other one, keeping my eyes fixed on the wall straight ahead of me as is required by the Official Guy Handbook in unfamiliar or uncertain urinal situations. Soon, the fellow progressed from humming to talking to me, and he did so in the most comical, over-the-top drunken-grandpa East European accent that is totally impossible to capture in writing. He also shouted a lot. What follows is a transcript of the encounter.
Guy: (humming)
Me: (attempting to pee)
Guy: Good.
Me: (still attempting to pee but unable to do so due to slow realization that guy is very, very creepy)
Guy: (looking over at me) Good good.
Me: (pretending not to notice so I can pee and get this over with)
Guy: Good night. Good girls.
Me: (glance over and nod politely. This turned out to be a tactical error)
Guy: (grins) Good girls. Fuck girls.
Me: (abandoning pretense of ignoring him) Oh?
Guy: (yells) HUNGARIAN GIRLS MOST BEAUTIFUL IN WORLD.
Me: Really.
Guy: WHILE YOU ARE IN HUNGARY YOU MUST EAT SZÖRGCZÜÜLFF (note: this was some Hungarian word I didn’t understand)
Me: Mmhm?
Guy: OH! I AM SORRY. IN HUNGARIAN IS WORD. SZÖRGCZÜÜLFF. IT MEANS … ah … (starts licking the air in an unmistakable imitation of cunnilingus)
Me: (trying frantically to pee so I can leave, but not meeting with much success)
Guy: (louder) HUNGARIAN GIRLS MOST BEAUTIFUL IN WORLD! (calms down) Scottish girls, not so much.
Me: Oh. (thinking of what I can say to him that is not “um”) I’m not Scottish.
Guy: Oh. AMERICAN! (points at me with [for all I know] a urine-soaked finger)
Me: Well, almost. Canadian. (Now is no time to explain the intricacies of dual citizenship. I have finally managed to pee and am trying to make the most of it.)
Guy. Canada? (pause as he collects his thoughts, then, joyously:) OTTAWA!
Me: Uh, no. Toronto.
Guy: Toronto? (quizzical look) Oh! Toronto. (yelling) BIG RADIO TOWER!
Me: Yes.
Guy: Goooooood. (finishes up, shakes the drops off, zips up, and extends a hand for a handshake. I stare at it in terror.) Well. Good luck.
Me: (Shake the hand. What can I do?)
Guy: (Leaves without washing up.)
Me: (Wash my hands for a full minute.)
I leave the washroom and, just as a kicker to my wonderful experience, there is someone there to collect money. Usually in Europe you have to pay in order to get into a bathroom. In Eastern Europe, sometimes you pay AFTER. It’s a nice racket. Anyway, there was a lady there with a cash box. I asked, “How much?” And she, I swear to God, leaned forward seductively, did a little shoulder shake to show off her fifty-something-year-old cleavage and said in a husky voice, “Well. That depends what you want.”
I quickly tossed a coin in her general direction and scooted out of there to try and explain what had happened to a group of amused and highly skeptical friends. And my prof.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Coming from China, I have a lot of really funny public toilet stories.
But being in the cast….I don’t need those tickets. :3
February 7th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
So, it was a couple of years ago and I was in downtown Toronto. Well, I had family from Florida visiting so I decided to show them the beauty of the city at night during the summer, but…nature began to call. So, I left them to explore and said I would meet up with them once I bled the lizard. I go into a building (I think was on Front Street) and go down a dimly lit hallway to go to the men’s washroom. The time is 8:55pm on a Tuesday (something like that) and I go into a stall to do number one. Suddenly, there’s a violent knock on my stall door. And I say “Umm…ocuupied” and the man, in a deep raspy voice, replies “It’s John”. By now I’m like “WTF?” in my head. He says “You ready?”…now I’m pissed and wondering WTF does that mean? As I look up from my “aim” to flush the wall facing me says:
For a good time meet me here Tuesdays at 9pm
- John.
I don’t know why I had to take a piss because I could of just shat myself right there and then. Downtown Toronto, love it or leave it.
February 8th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Oh the possibilities….
…
Guess I could tell a couple of really short ones
Story 1 (didn’t happen to me, but I witnessed it):
A couple of years ago, my parents (with the input of my two sisters and myself) were furnishing our new house. One furnishing trip involved a visit to a hardware store to compare the relative merits of various toilets. So there all five of us were, admiring the display models of toilets, each one attached to a freestanding sort of clapboard thing, resplendent in all its porcelain glory.
My older sister (who is taller than I, therefore weighs correspondingly more) decided to sit on one of the display toilets, because it would be amusing and random. She sat, we heard a slow ominous creaking noise, and my poor sister crashed to the ground, the display toilet shattering into a million pieces beneath her. We got yelled at, had to pay for the toilet, and left the store in disgrace
Story 2:
To set the scene - a French school in Dubai, I’m there on my weekend to take a French-government-administered language exam which is a big deal. We get a break between parts of the exam, so I rush to the washrooms, which are old and well-used. I narrowly escape soaking myself, yanking the creaky door shut in a hurry. Once the essentials have been talen care of, I try to open the door so I can go to my exam, which continues in a few minutes. However, the sliding bolt which locks the door of the stall has gotten stuck, and I’m trapped. I yank and bang, to no avail. I call out, hoping that my friends, who had taken advantage of the break as I had, will still be there & be able to spring me. No joy. Completely freaked out by now, fearing that I will miss my exam and be trapped in this dilapidated stall forever, I dig out my cellphone and, crouching next to the toilet, tearfully call my mom. She tells me, calmly, to bang and yank the lock some more, and to go on calling for help. After a few more minutes of yelling and banging on my part, one of my friends arrives on the other side of the door. I incoherently explain the situation, through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. Through our combined efforts - calmly determined on her side, desperate and nearly hyperventilating on mine - the stupid lock finally shoots open, and I am, of course, late for my exam. Took me several days to live down this crazy incarceration
February 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
So this one time I was in a bathroom at a bar in Northern Ontario in the middle of the summer, and the place was sweltering. I stumbled into the bathroom at one point to splash some cold water on my face, and while I’m at the sink, there is a woman (in her mid-30s or so) at the sink beside me. We stand there, doing our business, for about 10 seconds, when she looks at me and goes, “Hot.”
Now, at this point, I’m wondering, “Does she mean me, or the weather?”
She gives me the up and down and then says, “And not just the weather…”
Ooooook. Anyway, I smile and go back to wiping my face off. She stands at the mirror for a few more seconds, fiddling with her hair, and turns to me, saying, “I never know what to do with my hair.”
I’m pretty much unsure of where she’s going with this at this point. “Sugar, I can barely do anything with my own hair, nevermind your’s.”
She does the up and down again, and drunkenly purrs, “I know where I’d like to put your hair.”
… wait, back it up. What?
All I can do is awkwardly laugh and then head back out into the bar. She follows me, and I end up talking to her for about 5 minutes. Turns out that she’s a surgical nurse, and seemed quite nice, but there’s something about drunk, 30-somethings who have no game whatsoever that just doesn’t do it for me.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Okay,
So…My worst bathroom experience relates a lot to Urinetown itself!
A while back I was on a UK/European tour with a show and we were in Luxembourg that particular day. We were enjoying our afternoon shopping in the town square when a few of us had to use the bathroom.We went on a mad search for a public toilet and couldn’t find a single one. We finally ended up at a McDonalds, but at this particular location we have to pay something like 3 euro coins in order to get into the toilet. None of us had any change and ended up waiting until a local needed to use the bathroom but with the language issue we sounded crazy and the decided we wouldn’t push our luck! I ended up using the alley way and my friend who didn’t have the same option and waited until a woman came out of the women’s bathroom and snuck in behind her! (very smart!) The moral of the story is, bring the proper currency in change when your out and about in europe because it’s a privilege to pee!
February 9th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
[...] Josh (for the Grand Prize!), Anna, and Roel (tied for second place). [...]
February 9th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
While the contest itself is closed, more stories are obviously welcome! They were all hilarious and a pleasure to go through. I’d love to hear more!
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