A Word About Bathrooms

You know how you always see those movies about the Army in which guys in their skivvies are down on their hands and knees, scrubbing the floors till they shine and the fixtures till they sparkle, while a leathery sergeant glowers over them and barks how he wants to be able to eat his chow off that floor, or some such interesting dining habit? Well, I think we’ve been had. If the latrine in our barracks is any indication, no Army bathroom has been cleaned since the Korean War. The grime is so thick on our urinals that you could write your name in it, assuming you wanted to watch your diseased finger turn black and drop to the floor (where it would fit right in) a few minutes later. Also, apparently the water to the urinals comes from the hot water pipes and not the cold, because every time you flush, a gust of warm, err, “scented” air billows up into your nostrils. In the stalls there is absolutely no toilet paper; I guess they want us to get acclimated to doing it the Muslim way and use our bare hands. Great and useful training for us, I’m sure, where we’re going; but if I need to avail myself in that way, I hike over to Building 5 (the Indiana Military Academy, and also the DFAC, or Dining Facility) where they keep the stalls fully stocked, because officers use them.

Showering this morning was an adventure. The shower stalls are just barely big enough to wedge your shoulders into—which makes it interesting when you then turn on the water and you get to guess whether it’s going to come out ice cold or scalding hot (I got scalding hot in this morning’s lottery; my belly is still red). Every time someone else starts a shower, or ends one, or flushes a toilet, or opens the tap on a sink to brush his teeth, the water temp fluctuates about 30 degrees in a random direction. This has the admirable effect of making one limit one’s shower time to an interval so brief that would make the smelliest of hippies proud. Oh, and the drainage is not of the best—thank GOD for the people who recommended that I bring some Crocs to wear into and in the shower, to avoid standing in the stagnant muck that covers all the floor in that part of the bathroom area. I had always sworn that I would never wear such dorky looking metrosexual shoes, but I am a believer now.