The oddity of Uncle Bucking

John Candy had a lot of very funny movies. One that comes to mind is Uncle Buck where in Uncle Buck is forced into emergency kid watching duty. Inexplicably he goes to a parent-teacher conference at an elementary school wherein he is forced to use a urinal designed for someone much shorter than he is.

Naturally, this leads one to assume that when you encounter a similar circumstance, you have been Uncle Buck'd.

There are certain rules when using the public restroom. Some are so obvious it seems silly to mention them...like, if someone is already using the urinal, you do not step up beside them and share it.

Obvious, I know...and you hope everyone knows this. You suspect they do...you believe they do...you hope and pray they do...if you think about it at all.

Other rules are just as true but, being unwritten, seem to escape notice. Like, if you walk into a restroom with 5 urinals, someone is at one end, you always leave at least one empty one between you and they while they do their business.

I do not know why this is, I just know that it IS.

Perhaps it is the splatter effect...you do not want to get doused by some random dude's overspray.

And there are certain things you hope not to hear. Like loud grunts and moans or massive explosions of excessive exhaust from the posterior of someone in a stall. Let me rephrase that...you NEVER really want to hear those sounds...but if you MUST hear them, I guess you would rather they emanate from a stall than a urinal.

But the other unwritten yet eminently needful rule is the Uncle Buck rule.

Put succinctly, it would read, "Use the correctly heighted urinal".

See, for some reason, mens bathrooms always have two urinal heights. I do not know why...the stupid things have like 3' of aiming area, so in theory it is not real tough to hit the bullseye. Even for Ralphie after he shot his eye out.

But one will sit a foot higher than the lowest one. I presume the lower one is for children and perhaps the odd midget. I include the second category because you even see this phenomenon in card-secured areas of private businesses.

So imagine my surprise the other day when, answering the call of nature after 60ish morning ounces of water I walked in and saw some guy about 6'6"...using the short urinal.


That is kind of hard not to notice. It is one thing when forced into it by circumstances...we all have been Uncle Buck'd before. But to deliberately do so? Shame on you.