Do you pee with the water running?
I only ask because I walked out of the bathroom the other day, and a new friend said, “So, you’re one of those people?”
As if she had discovered some psychological truth about me. “What people,” I inquired.
“You know,” she said, “a turn the water on when you pee person.”
I wasn’t aware that this was even a categorizable (I made that word up) personality trait.
How much info could someone really gather on another based solely on whether or not s/he is a “water on when peeing person.”
I began to wonder what that meant-that I was a “turn the water on when peeing person?”
I thought I just didn’t want anyone to know if I was a “streamer” or a “trickler.”
Evidently, there is more to it than that, so I set out to find what it really meant to be a “turn the water on when peeing person.”
So I looked in the DSM IV – don’t worry about it. Okay, I really didn’t look, because someone told me that it wasn’t gonna be there, so I decided to search for a deeper, more spiritual answer to this life and times question.
So I hopped the first flight to New Delhi, India to seek my answer from the Dalai Lama himself.
He wasn’t available for questioning, but his secretary told me to “Ask Jeeves”, so I did.
This Jeeves character told me “that no web-matches were found” and “to make sure all my words were spelled correctly”-whatever that means. Sounds like a cover-up to me.
Since I was already on the other side of the planet, I decided to see what the head of the Catholic Church had to say on the matter. His secretary just told me to keep my mouth shut, and that I would be relocated immediately. Bureaucracies … whatcha gonna do?
Searching for something a bit simpler, I was off to see the Tiv, a tribe located in the northern provinces of Nigeria.
Sitting around the tribal elders, drunk off their beer, they told me they peed outside and to watch out for the “beings that lurk in the woods.” That’s good advice, I thought.
Almost broken, I decided to go to the the one stop shop for religions, the Wal-Mart of faiths, The Holy City on the banks of the Upper Keechi … Jerusalem … Texas.
Ah, The First Ezekiel, House of Allah, Word of the Faith, Agape of Loving Love, Belly of the Buddha and Latter Day Saints, St. Thomas Akiba Temple, non-denominational, Tantric Church, and crisis pregnancy clinic; I think I have found my sanctuary.
“I have come to seek the wisdom of the Rev. Mohammed Burnstien, CPA”.
… to be continued. Happy Halloween! Be safe, have fun.
Off the Cuff
October 31, 2003