Ode on a Ceramic Ur(i)n(al)

Invoking God and Grandmother

Alakazam!

I know what you’re thinking, and what you have been thinking for a long time: why did the author of this blog create Dudez Korner, only to let it sit empty for years?

Well, you see, I first thought of Dudez Korner the first time I joined Weight Watchers. Back in 2011 or so, I started attending WW meetings with my wife near our home in Atlanta. I found the meetings very informative, and they were indeed a source of support and encouragement for everyone involved. If there was one downside—if I should even characterize it as such—it was that the whole enterprise was extremely…girlish.

Go ahead, report me to The Committee on Standards and Right-Thinking, but in my lived experience, there are a few slight differences between men and women. I hope “slight” buys me a few more years of freedom to speak and write—oh, what the heck: there are enormous differences between men and women.

I won’t enumerate those differences, for that’s not what this post is about. I’ll just mention one that I noticed in the WW meetings: Women (in general, and not including every single woman who ever lived, so please don’t flood me with exceptions to this statement) benefit from a gentle, uplifting, positively-worded form of being told they’re doing it wrong—one so couched in supportive asides that they might not even notice that any fault at all is being laid at their feet.

Men, on the other hand (exceptions, such as Bible-study men, duly noted), are fine with a more direct, plainspoken approach to being informed that their failure to lose weight is not in fact due to science somehow not applying within the bounds of their blubbery corpus, but is more than likely because they are not following the program, so, guys, you know—go forth and follow the damn program…meeting adjourned! Harrumphs and backslaps all around, and no tears.

In fact, I had a precedent for this attitude, and it even applied to Weight Watchers. I had a (male) friend at work who joined WW with his wife. He had great success, but he often lamented that the tearful meetings went on and on when all they really needed to say was, “You all need to shut your pie holes.” He didn’t mean in general, or to be silent instead of speaking; he meant that one who would lose weight should shut their pie hole at the table—that is, to eat less.

Which is, beneath all the psychoanalysis and emotion-wracked resolutions that some women emit at WW meetings, the crux of the matter.

The pie hole: shut it sooner rather than later, preferably while there is still “pie” (any food) in sight.

So on the one hand you have the majority of the WW membership consisting of ladies who want an Oprah-ish experience, with a minority of the membership consisting of guys who might do better with more of a Great Santini approach (up to but not including the part where you have to go break another dude’s arm to show that you are on board with the program).

That realization, as I sat through the gentle exhortations from week to week, was what led me to envision a Dudez Korner, not in a blog at that time but in an actual corner of an actual room—a corner (korner because we’re men and we dig the rogue spelling) where fat men could gather and spit and insult each other into compliance with the science.

Hell, I wish I had thought of “Compliance with the Science” back then; that’s marketing gold.

Well, I never did more than envision Dudez Korner for Weight Watchers. It’s a good program and the meetings are fine without my variation, if almost entirely geared toward the distaff side of the hypothetical gender divide. However, when I created my blog and thought of having different sections, the idea of a dudez-oriented section appealed to me. Not to arbitrarily shut out women, of course, but to provide a clear signal that things in that section might not be quite…nice.

But then, in practice, I never saw any of my writing as appealing more to either gender, or, if it leant slightly one way or the other, as deserving to be segregated. This raises an interesting question: In this modern time when everyone of every age and gender has seen and heard it all, is there something that I, as a gentleman, ought to quarantine in Dudez Korner in hopes of not offending the ladies?

Since we’re now here in the Korner, you have probably surmised that I have finally hit upon a topic of sufficient grossitude to warrant placing it in the Korner.

If you’re not a Dude, or if you don’t want to contemplate gross things, stop reading now. I think, this many words in, that you have been warned. Ladies, step away from the Korner…

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This missive appeared above a urinal at the Jacksonville State University satellite campus near my home. The urinal was—thankfully—spotless by the time I saw this note.

I’m not one to make fun of someone else’s spelling, and in fact I like the word “heathern” because it makes me think that’s how the writer hears that word. Cool. I may use it someday myself, though I haven’t called anyone a heathen in living memory.

The crossed-out word below “shit” intrigued me because at first I thought the writer had attempted to write “defecated” but then wasn’t sure how to spell it (“de-fer-cated” to one who says “heathern”?). But after studying it some more I think it was “deposited” and then they forgot to write “shit” after that word, then went back and put it above “deposited” during rewrites. And then to avoid drawing an arrow to clarify what was deposited, they demonstrated excellent writerly instincts and realized that the s-word could be a standalone verb and didn’t need to be the object of another verb. It took me months to learn that lesson about concision during my letter-writing campaign, and I still struggle with verbosity. So, kudos to the scribe/janitor.

“What janitor?” you might ask. Or maybe you might not ask, because perhaps it is as clear to you as it is to me that only an aggrieved janitor would have taken the time and mustered the office supplies to compose this letter. Anyone else, say a would-be user of this bathroom, would have exited the room at high speed upon first smelling the “deposit” and then, if they fought on through the smell, seeing it. This is in a large building—there are other restrooms.

So, I posit a janitor as author. And I further posit that that janitor is the matriarch of a family, for I can’t imagine a man invoking the shitter’s grandmother—that seems random unless you (the janitor) are the hypothetical grandmother. Wouldn’t a grandfather lament the mistreatment of “your grandfather”?

While “older, female janitor” required some sleuthing, it doesn’t take Hercule Poirot to realize that the author is a Christian, God-fearing person. Maybe I’m the only person who does this, but whenever someone invokes The Golden Rule, I do a quick mental check of the possibility that the offender is in fact doing unto others as he/she would like others to do unto him/her. For instance, maybe someone gives you unsolicited advice because they have in fact benefitted from such advice from others, so it’s a gift they want to share. Well, I didn’t have to think for very long to decide that The Rule is totally appropriate here, because I simply can’t imagine someone crapping in a wall fixture because they like it when people do that to their own wall fixtures.

This ends my analysis of the beshitted urinal. Harrumph! Ptui! Virtual backslaps all around!

Well, guys—my heathern brethrern—thanks for visiting Dudez Korner. We may never come this way again, but you never know what’s going to jump out at you and demand a stern, manly going-over.

Boing!