Trying to Stay Negative

I should try harder to be happier. Happiness is a choice? Ah, no more philosophy for now.

Instead, how about we introduce A New Banal Stories Feature?!?! Yes! Ladies and Gentlemen, put your hands together for: My Daily Annoyances: A Retrospective of All That Annoys.

Today's Daily Annoyances:

The Single-Sex Bathroom that Exists Without a Companion Bathroom.

When I stumble upon a Ladies' Room, I expect a Mens' Room to be within striking distance. But on occasion, the drunken architect wishes ill and the risk of bladder infection upon his patrons, and decides against putting the complimentary facility nearby. Instead, he dreams: Let us make it an adventure, a urine-filled scavenger hunt of sorts! Will he make it on time? Oh, I doubt it, for I have been crafty! You see, my dear reader, I trust the general (and foolish!) instinct of the would-be-peeer to waste precious time looking in those "obvious" spots, like across the hall or to the left or the right of the discovered bathroom. But, oh, that would be too easy, now wouldn't it?!? My bathrooms eschew symmetry and ordered design; in fact, they eschew all forms of modernistic efficiency and logistics. They remain separate, unique, independent of another for form, function, and identity. They are the precursors to postmodern gender politics! Ahahhahahahah - just try and find two as one! You will fail. Men, to the basement, where your precious urinal hides at the end of the hall near the Janitor's Closet. Women, to the second floor, where the door to your porcelain thrones appears awkwardly at the landing of a stairway foyer, just close enough for general patrons of the building to hear you flush. You will go where I say, or you will not go at all. Amen.

(Special thanks to the Carpenter Hall at Dartmouth College for the painful inspiration for this feature. My the gods of architecture damn you to the eleventh level of prefabricated Hell.)