Home Urinal
The impossible dream - Los Angeles Times
The vast majority of my dreams are completely impossible: owning Mars, traveling to the future, writing a book. So when -- thanks to the magical economics of failed television pilot writing -- I got to buy a house, and that house needed a new bathroom, I was about to realize one of my lifelong dreams: owning a home urinal.
My contractor, obviously, thought this was the best idea anyone had ever come up with, and immediately went shopping with me for a classy, retro porcelain model, the kind you can saunter up to in a tux and slap a highball on. But then my neighbor, Holly Purcell, a very successful real estate broker, informed me that I absolutely could not install a urinal of any kind if I ever hoped to resell my house. Noting my confusion, she slowly explained that urinals, to my shock, gross women out.
I spent the next few weeks asking women, many of whom I barely knew, what they thought about urinals. The results were not good. First of all, it's got an unfortunate name. Toilets would still be kept outside if they were called crapinals. Also, my female friends said urinals conjured images of large, impersonal institutions such as prisons. They felt like the lidlessness was unsanitary. Basically, what I learned is that women have vastly overestimated the precision of peeing into a toilet bowl while standing up.
When I countered with the clear advantages of the urinal -- toilet seat always down, decreased water use, saved time, ease of cleaning, the option to pour in ice and play the most fun game in the entire world -- the truth came out. Urinals, these women eventually conceded, are simply too aggressively male.
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