Stage Fright is real
Happens to the best of us
Rather than forcing kids to suffer the embarrassment of composing their own wind sections in the toilets at schools, one solution proposed in northern Europe is to pipe in sweet music to drown out any anal-based arias. Swedish local councillor Cecilia Cato, based in the town of Tingsryd, devised the plan amid concern that some …
Nah, outside toilets at First School (Primary nowadays), who can pee over the wall so that it went onto the teacher's cars parked the other side. The whole thing was pretty much Victorian, a ceramic glazed trough like a gutter about 15 feet long, painted walls and quarry tiles.
I feel sorry for all the young chaps who’ve only been going to the pub since the smoking ban. Before the smoking ban, we had great fun trying to fill the little metal ashtrays which were thoughtfully screwed to the wall above the urinal.
Actually, I feel sorry for the ladies too - they’ve never had the pleasure either.
Sigh. Happy days.
Exactly! Embarrased? Oh HELL no!
I'll sit there singing "Sixteen Tons" & accompanying the wet wind section with a selection of armpit farts, wet slobbery zrbts into the elbow, honks, & a drum-roll tappity on the floor with my feet.
Don't be embarrassed, be entertaining! =-D
*Cough*
>Why are kids nowadays so delicate?<
Because they were brought up by feminist pedagogues and not by their parents!
This also relates to many other problems in our society, stemming from the feminized western male.
It must be solved, if our race and culture is to survive!
(vision: white naked male on beach chewing a ham sandwich while holding AR15)
My internal feminist (forcibly installed during the 1970's) would dearly love to disagree with this, but unfortunately there's more than a grain of truth to it. In Japan it's gone so far now that many men will sit down to urinate rather than stand because it makes less noise. And this is even in the land of the Toilet Queen.
(And before you ask, a Toilet Queen is a little box you fix to the wall of the toilet that emits white noise or other sound-blanking noises)
I sit down to piss simply because god attached a garden sprinkler to the end of my winkle.
The physics of one stream of liquid falling nearly a meter and entering a pool of liquid are such that no matter how good your aim or well-formed your nozzle, there's gonna be splashback. I have nothing to prove to anyone in my household, so I'll take sitting to piss over scrubbing pee mist off the wall any day. It also greatly reduces the dexterity requirements when it's early in the morning and I haven't had my coffee yet.
In Victorian times, people hummed and sang to mask the sounds of discharge. It is hardly new...
As far as sitting down to pee, you can chuckle over this http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30937492 but if you had to clean the urine off of the floor or walls, you would demand men sit. For women, there is always GoGirl.
"We used to have contests to see who could make the highest splash mark on the wall"
I remember my dad telling me of an acquaintance in primary school who (after holding it for a day) was capable of (and proud of) hitting the ceiling.
I never used the toilets at school - not because of embarrassing noises - but because they were vile hellholes - seldom cleaned, seldom flushed, inadequately supplied with paper, etc. etc.
(Also, if I was in charge of the school in Sweden, I'd just have the sound system permanently playing a loop of farting/splashing/grunting noises.)
"I never used the toilets at school - not because of embarrassing noises - but because they were vile hellholes - seldom cleaned, seldom flushed, inadequately supplied with paper, etc. etc."
In my school we had no stall doors and there was no soap. Needless to say it had to be a pretty severe emergency to get me to use one. Especially since there was always some kid ready to smack me into the wall or throw water on me.
In my school we had no stall doors and there was no soap. Needless to say it had to be a pretty severe emergency to get me to use one. Especially since there was always some kid ready to smack me into the wall or throw water on me.
You had water? Luxury! In my school, if you wanted water, you had to wait for a nerd to come in and smack him into the wall until he cried!
In my school we had no stall doors and there was no soap. Needless to say it had to be a pretty severe emergency to get me to use one. Especially since there was always some kid ready to smack me into the wall or throw water on me.
Ah, grade school/high school. Nothing says "welcome to our fucking society" like spending almost one's entire childhood in a place designed to resemble a prison.
(Also, if I was in charge of the school in Sweden, I'd just have the sound system permanently playing a loop of farting/splashing/grunting noises.)
'Pervers Pépère' (a comic strip character by Marcel Gotlib) takes, as one gag, a tape recorder past a water spewer, a weight lifter and a jackhammer operator, then pinches a little girl and finally kicks a large stone into a canal, recording it all. He then goes into a public toilet, rewinds the tape and plays back the succession of noises, to the (rapidly increasing) horror of the loo lady outside the stalls.
Agreed, the solution is to play sufficient recorded plops, splashes, gurgles and guffs that the ones that you make yourselves go unnoticed.
Years ago wasn't there a new thing in Japanese electronic toileting, of playing the sound of a waterfall, likewise as covering noise rather than encouragement although it works for that as well.
"I remember my dad telling me of an acquaintance in primary school who (after holding it for a day) was capable of (and proud of) hitting the ceiling."
We didn't have ceilings in the school urinals - just open air above our heads.
The Australians in the 1990s had a very non-PC approach to such matters in their children's TV programme series "Round The Twist". It even reached the BBC - and apparently appealed to kids' sense of outraging adult sensitivities.
Here's a sample relevant to the quoted comment Little Squirt. See 21m37s denouement if you don't have time to get the full story.
My memory of the school toilets is the gutter with loo cakes in them at the bottom of a porcelain wall that used to be everywhere before things started to get more private. Still some of those in old unrenovated pubs.
Standing there one day, 6 or seven in a line, one lad looking down had his glasses fell off into the gutter and instantly all streams converged on them, pushing them along the gutter toward the drain....
But generally the loos in schools being out of sight from staff were not places to hang around unless you wanted a beating or something more humiliating.
"I remember my dad telling me of an acquaintance in primary school who (after holding it for a day) was capable of (and proud of) hitting the ceiling."
Might have been one of my former(1) classmates from when I was in primary school, several decades ago. (Hint: 1975 is included in that period of my life.)
(1) And no, I'm not in the least bit disappointed that these people are *former* classmates. I regret somewhat having them as former *classmates*, or even former *countrymen*(2), but there you are.
(2) I've spent a third of my life living outside my native country...
The secondary school I was "allocated" to (SE London, 1969) was known for its roughness, with plenty of stories of older pupils causing physical injury and suffering to the 1st year intake.
So, having one's head pushed down into the (used) toilet bowl and it being flushed, being forcibly circumcised and of having razor blades dragged across one's chest - all "initiation rites" performed by these older male pupils.
As an 11 yr old, I wasn't expecting to see the 2nd year :-(
About 2 years later a new head, (who was ex-army) was installed and the school improved dramatically and the nasty elements were removed.
From farts to Tchaikovsky, not bad for a Monday and has helped me to stop laughing after the election.
For those of you, unfamiliar with "1812" try this, especially if you think "old" music is boring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGiz_qbViE0
And the longer one here, one of the best you can find on Youtube.
Tchaikovsky Overture 1812 - Seiji Ozawa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DFsF_0tfiM
And then there is the Wiki for your further information.
I think it would be better to change people's attitudes than further encourage them to believe sounds we all make are something to be ashamed of, are evil or wrong, and need to be covered up.
It is a perpetuating harm which affects an incredible number of people. Let's start by figuring out who is indoctrinating people into believing what's entirely natural isn't acceptable.
Mine's the one with the "Loud and Proud" badge ...
I think it would be better to change people's attitudes than further encourage them to believe sounds we all make are something to be ashamed of, are evil or wrong, and need to be covered up.
Judging from conversation threads I've seen, whether it's ever OK to fart in public is apparently highly controversial among women. Also controversial: Whether it's OK to fart in front of your husband. It's crazy how repressed our social norms still are, especially for women.
I as a parent insist on setting a good example for my boys.
We all make various noises -- and it seems that since I've had my gall bladder out, my variety of noises has only expanded.
If someone over there has been abusing their kids by making potty time something to be ashamed of, its time to fix the parents, or the social structure that permitted the shaming.
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Obviously, they need music that reinforces Christianity's moral teachings. Specifically about saving oneself until marriage. Such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ZF_R_j0OY
Warning: very NSFW.
But if whoever checks the suitability of music doesn't go further than the first few bars...
@Ishy
I found it because my choice of youtube videos is rather eclectic and youtube's suggestions algorithm bears almost no relationship to what I've watched or what I'm interested in. Occasionally when I tell youtube I'm not interested in a suggested video it will explain that it suggested that particular video because of a video I'd previously watched, but which as far as I can tell is unrelated in any way, shape or form.
I have no idea why youtube suggested that video to me. Actually, it was another video of the same pair doing the same song. The one I referenced here was titled "The Loophole." The one youtube suggested to me had a cruder title (taken from the lyrics, starting with "f"). And two very cute women in the thumbnail. There was no way I could resist that.
No way I could resist watching some of their other videos, either.
Makes a change from the cat videos. Ob cat video (affectionate cats).
"Too much time on my hands."
Make sure you wash them.
A few years ago it was noticed that while we older men would have a conversation at the urinals - our younger colleagues would disappear into a stall. They often didn't bother washing their hands afterwards - they just made an immediate beeline for the exit.
When I was a lad, at boarding school, the only loo paper provided was Izal Medicated. I don’t think that you can get it anymore - but (for the uninitiated - i.e. the youthful) it was like wiping your arse on a flimsy*.
My particular use for Izal was to (before settling comfortably) fold a little flotilla of ships and float them in the bowl (4 or 5 was generally possible in the bog dock) - and then see how many of them I could sink with my tor-poo-do.
Ashamed of having a shit? Not me. It’s a great way to pass the time - even if all that you have to entertain yourself is a copy of AutoTrader (or a phone with The Register!)
*you don’t know what a flimsy is? Strewth! It’s a thin, crinkly, piece of paper that would be placed behind the ‘original’ with a sheet of carbon paper inbetween. That way, when the ‘original’ was printed with an impact** printer of some description you’d have an instant copy. In any event, a flimsy would be crinkly and uncomfortable to wipe your arse with - and with a high likelihood of Bungle’s Finger*** as a result.
**dot matrix, daisy wheel, golfball - that manner o’ sausage.
***look it up.
When I was a lad, at boarding school, the only loo paper provided was Izal Medicated.
I too remember (without fondness) Izal Medicated. Very similar to greaseproof paper, and completely non-absorbent.
But, 40(cough) years on, it's the smell of carbolic soap which always brings back memories of my infant school toilets - tiled in dark green, with lighter patches where the moss had taken hold...
@Alister - I didn't mind the smell of carbolic soap. Actually, I quite like it in a weird sort of way. I'd buy it today if it weren't for the fact that my wife wouldn't be too happy.
Back in the day, of course, the authorities weren't so precious about dirt and grime, and we used to be able to get to, and hide behind, those huge, wheeled, galvanised bins that all the food waste and other stuff from the kitchens got lobbed into. I don't know how big they really were, except that they were bigger than me (at the time). And they always had a weird, yellowy brown, slick at the base - and a very pungent smell of rotting cabbage and other food waste. Not all the evocative smells of childhood are pleasant!
"When I was a lad, at boarding school, the only loo paper provided was Izal Medicated. "
In the 1950/60s many households still only had outside toilets. On the back of the door was a nail from which hung neatly cut squares of the previous days' newspapers. Hard as Izal but at least you could catch up with news. Annoying when you couldn't find the other piece of an interesting story.
"My particular use for Izal was to (before settling comfortably) fold a little flotilla of ships and float them in the bowl [...]"
Someone's autobiography described a school where the pupils' toilets were wooden benches with a hole - over a water-filled open drain that ran the length of the stalls. A common trick was to make a paper boat and float it along the length of the drain - driven by the prevailing current. They would usually set fire to the boat before releasing it - and wait for the screams.
A common Victorian design of lavatory for mills and factories consisted of a series of stalls with seats atop a porcelain gutter part-full of water, with a flush unit at one end. Periodically, this would be triggered and the accumulated turds flushed away.
However, a very common trick eventually forced a re-design of this system. The trick was simple: chuck a large ball of lit waxed paper down the hole closest to the flusher, then trigger it whilst some of the other stalls were occupied. This then burned the backsides of anyone not quick enough to stand up as the burning paper came past. Smarter pranksters generally departed rapidly before any scorched-arse victims could find them.
The re-designed system merely had partitions dipping down into the water surface in the gutter to extinguish burning items; mill workers in those dim and distant days didn't have access to metallic sodium and the like.
"It’s a great way to pass the time - even if all that you have to entertain yourself is a copy of AutoTrader"
In the 1960s. After lunch my brother-in-law would go to the outside toilet - taking a cup of tea or half an orange to consume. It was said that being in a large family this was the only place for some privacy.
" 8:30 to 16:00."
For school I left the house at 7:30 to catch a series of buses - and returned home by about 17:00 - later if there was a hobby club.
Urinals were no problem - but It took me many years to get over my childhood aversion caused by the schools' Victorian buildings' ancient sitting toilet facilities.
When I was a wee lad my parents sent me to military boarding school in Florida.
Due to the amount of young reprobates being presumably sent there to shape up, the school was probably verrrry concerned about drug use or wanking in the stalls because there were none. No walls, partitions, nada.
Just a long line of toilets were you could observe someone doing his business 8 bogs down.
Strangely enough I was really constipated for about a week and then learned not to give a shit ;-)
Nowadays, both my kids can be counted on to hit the crapper like clockwork as soon as they get home, because of course, it wouldn't do to do it at school ;-)
p.s. don't approve of the above, but you get used to almost anything if you really have to
Referring to the original "It's the terror of knowing that the wet fart is about" version by Queen and David Bowie or the later Vanilla Ice "I'm on a roll, time to go solo" version - both lyrics fare well in the context of loo visits.
Tum dum dum dida dum dum..
There's a scene in Aristophanes Frogs where Dionysus meets Aeacus a security guard in the underworld. Aeacus believes Dionysus stole his puppy, Cerberus, so he's really pissed off. Aeacus tells Dionysus that the hags of hell “are going shred your blood-soaked kidneys,” whereupon the immortal deity Dionysius falls flat on his face cowering in fear. Dionysuius’ next line is: “I shit myself!”
Will that do?
I know of a couple "flimsies":
1) A telegram or TELEX printout is called a flimsy. Some people called the output of early thermal printers flimsies.
2) One of my Uncles called a fuel can a flimsy (he claimed he learned the term from the Brits in Italy during the last days of WWII ... not sure where this actually came from, he's the only person I ever heard use it).
3) Bingo cards, according to one of my Aunts (wife of the above Uncle).
2) One of my Uncles called a fuel can a flimsy (he claimed he learned the term from the Brits in Italy during the last days of WWII ... not sure where this actually came from, he's the only person I ever heard use it).
This comes from the British issued fuel cans being made of very, very thin metal, due I suppose to rationing of materials. Most British land forces quickly adopted captured German ones (and later copied and manufactured their own), which were much more strongly built. Hence why they are still commonly called Jerry cans.
In the 1970s my Finno-Swedish girlfriend turned out to be the daughter of a Government minister and CEO of a large company. She invited me to a holiday at their summer cottage on one of the larger islands in the archipelago.
The outside toilet was the common Scandinavian cottage "dry earth" bucket under a hole in the wooden bench. The bench had two holes - and my friend told of her long, long school summer holidays when she and her best friend would gossip for a while while using the toilet.
There was a similar two-seater on a farm in England that my friends were renovating. It had been a working farm until 1970 - with no electricity or mains water/sewerage. When landscaping the garden it was discovered that the bank by the toilet was coal-fire ashes several feet deep - with many Camp coffee bottles in the layers. For years afterwards broken glass would often appear on the surface of the new lawn.
On a one day visit to China in 1993 the tourist group included several USA elderly ladies. On getting off the Pearl River ferry they asked for the "comfort station" and were directed to a building. My girlfriend followed them. She knew what to expect - and later described those ladies' reactions to a row of toilets separated by low walls.
The course has been designed by Dr. Carl Gruber of the 'Institute of Going a Bit Red' in Helsinki. Here he himself introduces the course.
Hello my name is Carl Gruber. Thank you for inviting me into your home. My method is the result of six years work here at the institute in which subjects were exposed to simulated embarrassment predicaments over a prolonged fart, period, time (sound of farting). Sorry.
Lesson two, noises. Noises are a major embarrassment source. Even words like tits, winkle and vibraphone, cannot rival the embarrassment potential of sounds. Listen to this if you can. (slurping squishy noise). How do you rate your embarrassment response? A) High, B) Hello, C) Good evening. If C, you are loosening up and will soon be ready for this. (plopping, popping noise) Well, how did you rate? A) Embarrassed, B) Hello, C) Good evening.
"[...] then again holding said candle could be a fire hazard."
There was a music hall speciality act called "Le Pétomane" - but I don't think he ignited his farts.
...concerning less advanced facilities, I would like to share the experience of the cottage we used to live in in Norfolk. In the outhouse was a 48 gallon drum stood on end with the other end removed and a lavatory seat perched upon it. The drum was situated in a small cubicle in the outhouse and it was a fine and quiet place in which to contemplate the world (some come here to sit and think ;¬) etc.). Unfortunately 'progress' intervened and a septic tank was installed in the orchard and a normal Crapper in the bathroom. This meant that the oildrum was now surplus to requirements and so the council were duly called to remove it. At this point I should mention that the drum had become rather full, to within 4 inches of the top.
In due course a lorry turned up, just a regular flat-bed lorry with two council employees in the cab. They introduced themselves and then went round to the outhouse to start the removal. They must have spent around 15 minutes looking at the problem ;¬) before deciding that they should 'walk' the drum to the lorry by rolling it on its edge. This was just about possible with great care but the 'contents' were lapping perilously close to the edge the whole time.
Eventually they arrived with the drum at the back of the lorry, and another lengthy pause ensued while they argued about how they were going to get the wretched drum up onto the lorry. My brother and I (6 years and 8 years old) were spellbound. This was the best entertainment we had ever seen, better even than the clowns at Billy Smart's circus or the time that our father spilled some gravy on grandma's white two-piece and had to go into the kitchen to smother (unsuccessfully, I might add) his laughter.
A few attempts were made at a conventional lift with both chaps forcing their fingers under the rim of the drum, but instability showed itself very quickly and much slopping of contents could be observed. So far they had managed to avoid any spillage but it was close.
Their next cunning plan involved one guy standing on the flatbed and reaching down to grab the top of the drum, while the other attempted the conventional lift from the bottom of the drum. With much straining and groaning and use of Norfolk rural epithet, the drum slowly made its wobbling way towards the flatbed; it must be said that the greater part of the effort was contributed by the unfortunate guy on terra firma, and he was clearly at the end of his powers by the time the base of the drum came to rest on the edge of the flatbed. It was a huge misfortune then, that this herculean effort was rewarded by a slip from the guy on the lorry which allowed the drum to sway and nearly fall. He managed to rescue it and slide it fully onto the flatbed, but not before a veritable Niagara of 'contents' had cascaded over his unhappy colleague below.
My brother and I were thunderstruck: we laughed until our sides were aching, but this was nothing compared to the guy on the flatbed, who started crying with laughter, and then smartly jumped off the flatbed and nipped round to the cab where he proceeded to lock himself in the lorry. He carried on laughing and at one point it seemed as if he would be sick.
The unfortunate 'creature from the black lagoon' in the meantime had been trying to wipe himself off with clumps of grass, with the success that you can imagine this activity might engender. He made various entreaties to his colleague in the cab, but it was no dice. Eventually he heaved himself up onto the flatbed and secured the noisome drum with ropes and then the lorry left, flatbed occupied by the drum and the now brown-overalled council employee, with attendant cloud of delighted flies.
This memory has been treasured for nearly 50 years.
So it seems very tame that teenagers are unable to perform in public - I won't mention the competitive element that other commenters have mentioned other than to say that producing the longest flame was a key competence needed for dormitory life ;¬)
Mike Hayes of Prickle Farm fame used to relate a story about cleaning out the septic tank on the day of a wedding he had to attend. He fell in and no amount of washing could remove the stink!
First house we lived in in Australia the night cart used to collect the full can and replace it with an empty one. Mother wrote a letter to the local paper in UKLand. They refused to print it on the grounds that life couldn't ever be that primitive, even in the colonies.
"First house we lived in in Australia the night cart used to collect the full can and replace it with an empty one."
Working in Stockholm in 1978 I rented a summer cottage in a nearby village for the summer. The toilet was a privy in the garden. Under the toilet seat was a large metal can.There was also a bucket of earth with a small shovel. This was used to cover your faeces in the bucket. Once a week a truck came round and replaced the can.
IIRC in the Irish novel "At Swim, Two Boys" there is a description of the night-soil man (circa 1916) having to bring the contents through a shop with the customers trying to ignore him.
Let the kids make their own percussive music.
10 year old Alex Shumaker "Welcome to the Jungle" Guns n Roses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwq8UQSGzgg
Paradise City 6 year old Drummer - Avery Drummer Molek