Future’s so bright, I gotta wear lead underwear

user-gravatar Headshot

When I was a kid, I envisioned the future as a Jetsons-like utopia, where we would zip around in rocket ships and explore other planets with friendly robots and kids named Will Robinson.

Anybody got a copy on the bathroom situation up here?Anybody got a copy on the bathroom situation up here?

One of my very first real memories is from July 20, 1969, when my mom and dad woke me up out of a dead sleep to go outside and watch a teeny speck of light travel through inky dark skies toward the moon, where a “giant leap for mankind” was about to happen. I was a little bitty kid and I’ll never forget the excitement in the atmosphere – something big was about to happen and my mom and dad got me out of bed for it. (I don’t know about y’all, but when my parents put me to bed, the only real excuses for getting up before morning were a house fire or the need to vomit – getting out of bed in the dead of night was unheard of.)

A lot of awesome things have happened for mankind in my lifetime. We went to the moon, we made electric cars, we cured Polio, we developed wireless technology, we sent a camera to Pluto and actually got pictures back, and we decided we couldn’t be trusted as a society to know which public bathroom to use.

Oh wait. That last part wasn’t awesome at all, it’s pitiful.

I’ve been in a lot of bathrooms. If you follow along, you know they’re kind of my thing. (That’s probably not something I should include on a resume.) Weird stuff has happened to me in public restrooms across the country, but one thing that has never happened is someone showing me a part of their anatomy I didn’t want to see.

When I was nine, I got flashed in the cold case area at Winn Dixie, by a troglodyte who apparently thought it was OK to lurk beside the Cool Whip with his dinger hanging out of unzipped Levis, but I’ve never seen anything that even vaguely resembles a male organ in the ladies’ room of a truck stop or a public rest area. Mostly because I go into a stall, shut the door and do my business in private, like the other people using the bathroom. I can’t speak for the men’s room, but no one is peeing in the sinks and flashing people in the ladies’ rooms I’ve been in.

Partner Insights
Information to advance your business from industry suppliers

Unfortunately, there’s a much greater chance of seeing someone’s junk in the parking lot, when they stand on the catwalk to relieve themselves. (Side note: I’ve decided to buy a Nerf gun for that – just zap people with Nerf rockets, scare them bad enough to pee on their own leg, but not hurt them. Who’s going to press charges against someone for shooting them with a Nerf gun? Can you imagine that scenario? “Uh, Officer, I was minding my own bidness, peeing beside my truck, when this crazy woman shot me in the goodies with a Nerf gun…”)

We don’t have little kids, but when we did have little kids, they never went into public restrooms alone, so it didn’t matter what other people were doing. We took them into a stall and shut the door and did our business in private, like everybody else in the bathrooms we used. I’m not sure where all these people who are envisioning a rash of child molesters grabbing kids in the bathroom because some men choose to wear skirts are coming from – or what bathrooms they’re sending their kids unattended into, but common sense and personal responsibility dictates you look out for your kids on a level that the law shouldn’t have to be involved in.

The guy exposing himself at Winn Dixie found that out the hard way when my dad and the butcher chased him down in the parking lot and gave him a Georgia boy ass whoopin’ before the cops got there for scaring the crap out of a kid and being a disgusting degenerate.

Of course, in today’s general climate, everyone would have been sued, Winn Dixie would end up having to pay the Cool Whip guy for pain and suffering and we’d all have to prove what bathroom we should use by having our lead underwear inscribed correctly.

Welcome to the future.

Showcase your workhorse
Add a photo of your rig to our Reader Rigs collection to share it with your peers and the world. Tell us the story behind the truck and your business to help build its story.
Submit Your Rig
Reader Rig Submission