Recently on a short road trip with my wife, we stopped at a truck stop out of growing necessity in search of a bathroom. Everything seemed fine when I walked in. I strode past sinks and faucets and skirted a row of stalls on my right, then went to the last urinal. There were three on the left.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. An unknown smell snuck up on me, slowly. Not there one second, then ambushing my senses in the next.
The stench of urine was so strong that at first, I mistook it for menthol. It had the same burning properties in my eyes and nose as Vicks VapoRub and with the same cooling effect. I couldn’t escape it. It crawled into my nose and hung around my head like a cloud.
I tried to not breathe. That didn’t last long so I tried to take shallow breaths. I felt like Austin Powers after he had awoken from cryosleep and was stuck in place ‘evacuating.’ The process seemed to never stop. It was worse than being tasered in Morocco in 2010.
They told me it would only last five seconds. They screamed taser, taser, taser, and zapped me with twenty thousand volts. The electric shock felt like one-inch steel ball bearings were being pumped through my veins instead of blood. I was stuck in time but knew it would only last five seconds, so I counted to five, five times. Either time ceased to function normally or my perception of it sped up.
This urinal was worse. When I thought about sliding one to the left in an attempt to escape the toxic plume of miss-targeted evacuations, another man came in and stood in front of the first urinal. Due to bathroom etiquette, I couldn’t move. A gentleman always leaves a space between themselves and another unless all available urinals are taken. Only then should he stand in an open space between two other men. It is standard bathroom etiquette.
I was stuck there in the corner at the third urinal on the left until I was done, suffocating in a concentrated menthol-like worse-than-getting-tasered cloud of ammonia gas.
I finally finished up and quickly headed to the sink to wash my hands, but really wanting a shower. I moved to dry my hands as a young man in his twenties walked in. He proceeded on a line towards the urinals and following the unspoken rules of etiquette went straight to the place I had just vacated in the corner to the right of the first gentleman still peeing.
And the cycle started all over again.
