By emily

GRADE: F

As Sarah Silverman has already established, girls don’t poo. They do pee -- occasional perfume-scented tinkles -- but solid food matter that their bodies can’t transmute into shiny hair/glowy skin etc. is removed from their tummies by some divine agent (Jesus most likely) and spirited away to food heaven, where it remains, for ever and ever, world without end, amen.

Well, I would never want to contradict Ms. Silverman, and I would certainly never want to confess to pooping. Because, well, ew! But let’s face facts here: everybody poops. There’s even a Japanese children’s book with that exact title, so it must be the case. And maybe I’m neurotic and I need to get over this immediately, but I can’t ever quite bring myself to . . . make this theory manifest . . . in an office environment.

Why on earth don’t the architects in charge of designing spaces where people are supposed to spend big 8 or 9 hour chunks of their lives just go ahead and put in single-stall lavatories, already? Doesn’t it just make sense? At the very least they could play loud music or make the walls thin so that the sound of the water in the pipes is audible. The bathroom in my office, in addition to being eerily silent, is always, always populated. The ladies here all seem to be health-conscious types who drink a ton of water and whiz accordingly. I don’t want people to hear me poo, and I certainly don’t want to hear them poo either. We don’t know each other that well! How are you supposed to make cheery chitchat with someone when, a few minutes earlier, you heard them unleash a barrage of brown? Not to be vulgar or anything.

So far my solution to this problem has been simple: just don’t do it. I am fairly sure that this is unhealthy. As I left the office today, looking forward to the comforts of the private commode at the gym, I wondered: do I have a legitimate gripe here? Or am I just full of shit?