So this is a thing I realized today: I find port-o-potties hilariously funny. Like, all the time. I don’t know what it is about them. They just make me giggle. And this is not a new thing. I think I have always found them funny. So I remember this one time when I was little I was in the car with my mom and I all of a sudden wondered to myself,
Self, how do they get port-o-potties from one place to another?
And wouldn’t you know it, about 5 minutes later a pick-up truck with not one, not two, but three port-o-potties on the back drove right on by! It made total sense! Up to that point I was trying to think of all the different possibilities: dropped by helicopter? Towed in? Placed on some sort of motorized platform with wheels and directed there via a remote computing device? (I didn’t say I was a logical child.) This turn of events had three distinct effects: (1) I was very excited; (2) I laughed really hard; (3) I was impressed by the speed with which the universe answered my extremely burning silent inquiry. Maybe there was a god?
Anyway, fast-forward a few years. I developed this nasty, unintentional habit of timing my summer runs for exactly when some sort of service came to clean the port-o-potty right by the Ocean Parkway entrance to Prospect Park. I don’t know if any of you have ever walked by when a port-o-potty is being cleaned but it is one of the worst smells ever. And it travels. I would be like 1/2 mile away and I would all of a sudden get a waft of this disgusting aroma and realized that, damnit, I had done it again! And then I would spend the next 1/2 mile trying to breath only through my mouth while simultaneously feeling a great deal of sadness for whatever poor bastard was tasked with that particular job. I mean, can you imagine? Being like, right there while all the nasty stuff from the port-o-potty hole comes up through a tube into the back of the truck? And then having to walk around with that odor stuck to your clothes?! (I have a theory that stinky particles are stickier than nice-smelling ones and that is why garbage mens’ clothes smell like garbage whereas florists clothes do not smell like flowers.) Between the feelings of pity and the slight odor-induced nausea I would also be sort of giggly because of course I went running at exactly the time when the port-o-potty was being cleaned again. I mean, what are the odds?!
And then today, I was walking around and there was this port-o-potty and on it was painted the name of the company and do you know what it was? Rent-A-Unit. Okay, so if you were to come up to me one day and be all,
Rebekah, if you were to guess what the company Rent-A-Unit has on offer what would it be?
I really don’t think I would guess a port-o-potty. No, sir. Off the top of my head I can think of one or two things I would be likely to guess and they both are closely related to the possible usages of the male anatomy outside of urination. There are just so many possible funny names for port-o-potty companies that I felt really let down by this one. It saddened me.
Okay, and now for the last thing which is the funniest thing that has ever happened to me in relation to port-o-potties. So the other day I was walking down my street past this construction site and I saw what looked like a port-o-potty with the door ajar. On the side was painted “Call-A-Head,” which I think is a superb name for a port-o-potty company. As I approached the structure I kept repeating in my head,
Do not look in the potty….do not look in the potty…do not look in the potty…
I mean, really, you never know what could be hiding within the confines of a random moveable toilet. There could be someone in there with his or her pants down. Or a possum. Or, I don’t know, some birds that would come flying out right when you walk by, scaring the shit out of you. But of course I ignored my own logic and peaked into the potty. What I saw was hilarious. There, inside the potty, was a man in some sort of outfit — security guard? — sitting at a tiny little desk doing paper work. His office was a potty. And I thought to myself,
Man, if I find myself sometime down the line waking up, getting myself Dressed and then heading to the office except that my office is not really an office but is instead a head, I would be very sad.
How does one put on an outfit that looks Serious and Professional and then commute to work and then go into a potty and sit at a teeny tiny desk and take themselves, or their jobs, seriously? I would just laugh all day long.
The end.
franklyrebekah 