Can We All Agree to Just Sit DOWN on Toilets?!?!

I’m tired of going into a public restroom and having to skip from stall to stall trying to find a toilet free of pee-droplets so my poor kid can use the potty, or so I can use the potty without squatting. This is getting ridiculous.

Ladies? Can we just maybe go ahead and sit down on public toilets? I’m talking to you, squatters!

I understand the anxiety of having your thighs and half of your butt-cheeks touch a place that was recently touched by a complete stranger’s thighs and half of her butt-cheeks. That’s icky enough on its own.

And even worse than the horror of swapping dead skin-cells with strangers is the crippling revulsion that you might accidentally sit in stranger-pee. I’m pretty sure there is a special corner of hell reserved for arsonists and puppy-kickers where they have to repeatedly sit down in a puddle of someone else’s urine for all of eternity.

So if you’re a squatter, I get it. I really do.

But if you’re squatting in an effort to avoid potentially smearing your thighs in the bodily fluids of complete strangers, you are not part of the solution; you are, in fact, THE PROBLEM.

YOU are ruining peeing sitting down for everyone else.

The problem with squatting is that we women can’t control where our pee goes, which is kind of the reason toilet seats were invented in the first place. A woman’s anatomy is such that, in squat position, our pee is practically guaranteed to hit unintended targets. We’re not like men, armed with what amounts to a water gun made of flesh. (Super not-fair, God.) Squatting, a woman’s pee could just as easily spray like the “mist” function on a garden hose attachment as squirt straight down into the toilet. It could get on her clothes. Her shoes. The floor. And it will definitely get on the toilet seat. Also? Squatting is exercise. Do we really want to mix exercise with excrement? Don’t even get me started on trying to do a number two while squatting. I’d rather get punched in the face by an angry monkey.

Dear phobia-encumbered squatters, if you enter a bathroom stall equipped with an unblemished toilet seat and you squat instead of sitting down, you just totally screwed everyone else’s chance at getting to sit down and take a pee on that particular toilet for the rest of the day, or until the cleaning people come and wipe your nasty mess up. (And btw that’s so wrong – I know it’s “their job” to clean the toilets and everything, but do you really need to make the task even more disgusting than it already is just because you’re afraid to sit on the stupid toilet? Come ON.) When you squat-pee, a.k.a. piss all over the toilet seat, everyone who uses that toilet after you sees your foul yellow droplets on the toilet seat and has to A) choose another stall, B) clean your pee with a wad of toilet paper or C) squat like you did. All of these options suck.

WHICH IS WHY WE JUST NEED TO ALL AGREE TO SIT. And I mean all of us, as in the entire female gender. This plan only works if we agree all together to do it as one – it’s like herd immunity for public toilets. And as an added bonus, let’s also agree to keep our thighs and butt-cheeks clean, mkay ladies? If we can confidently rely on each other’s non-funkiness it will be that much easier to “take the plunge,” so to speak. (And by the way, it should go without saying that this rule doesn’t apply to porta-potties. In porta-potties, you don’t sit no matter what, even if it means peeing all over yourself.)

If we all agree to sit down on the toilet seat because HELLO that’s why it was invented, we’ll never again have to worry about sitting in someone else’s pee or getting our own pee all over ourselves in an attempt to avoid sitting in someone else’s pee. Everyone wins and nobody has to touch pee.

Squatters? What do you say? PLEASE. My kid needs to pee.

Kristen Mae is a devoted wife and mother, ADHD momma-warrior, violist, health-nut, and writer. She is the voice of Abandoning Pretense, where her goal is to provide a community where women are free to be honest about their struggles with marriage, parenthood, and life. In addition to her blog, Mae shares hilarious and heart-warming tidbits of her life on her Facebook page, Google+, and Twitter.