"Who's In Charge Here?"

I originally called this “Who’s The Boss?” but I changed it, fearing disappointing Tony Danza fans when they discovered that it wasn’t about the show.

A recently discovered new wrinkle in our special toilet seat…

Aw, Man?

Come on!  One toilet seat story.                                                                

You already told one.

It’s a follow-up.  Cut me some slack here, will ya?  It’s not like it’s “One of a Series.” 

Unless you think of more of them.

I won’t.

I know you.  Your imagination’s like popcorn.  One idea “pop-pop-pops”, and then suddenly there are a hundred variations.  A whole toilet seat anthology.  And you wonder why you’re not more popular.

Let’s just do this, okay?

Fine.  I just want it on the record that, for me – and I cannot believe I speak only for myself – one “toilet seat” story is enough.  You may now proceed without further interruption.

Thank you.

A little over a year ago, after experiencing its wonders in a luxury hotel in Hawaii, we purchased, and had installed in our Master Bathroom a multi-faceted Toto toilet seat that does certain things automatically, and other things with the push of a button.  (Specifically several “push-button” cleansing services, which, for politeness sake, I will not go into.) 

Clarifying Note:  Although our house includes three bathrooms, we only purchased one of these pampering toilet seats, “A” of all, because they’re expensive, and “B”, because I was embarrassed by the extravagance, hence its installation in the “Off Limits To Visitors” Master Bathroom.  We are the only ones who know we have it.  Other than you.)

Okay so recently, I became aware of an additional Toto toilet seat function of which, to that point, I was entirely the dark. 

This part I already knew.  When you step up to the toilet, the lid automatically goes up.  When you’re done and walk away, after a prescribed period of time, the lid automatically lowers back down.  Twenty seconds, thirty seconds – I really don’t know for sure, I have better things to do than stand around timing toilet lid descensions, it could be forty seconds, I have honesty no idea…okay, now I’m curious.  I’ll be right back.

………………………

It’s a minute and a half.  Although it may have been specifically set to that time when it was originally installed.  Though I do not recall the installer asking me,

“How long do you want the lid to stay up before it automatically comes down?”

And I usually remember questions like that.  Maybe they asked my wife.  Though I doubt if she’d have said, “A minute and a half.”  She is generally more impatient than that.

Okay so the “New Wrinkle.” 

I discovered this by accident one day while I was, well, engaged in an activity one performs involving toilets...

You are so Victorian!

I know…  And I was completing my business when the phone rang, and I raced out to answer it, and, in my haste, I neglected to flush.  (Some Totos have an “automatic flushing” capacity.  Ours, resulting from our-toilet-Toto-toilet-seat incompatibility, does not.)

Some time later, when I returned to the bathroom, it came to my attention that the lid (and the accompanying seat, I am a guy after all) of the toilet was still up.  This surprised me, as it had been at least an hour since I had availed myself of its services.

It was then I realized that if, for some reason, you had forgotten to flush, the Toto toilet seat lid (and the accompanying seat) would refrain from automatically coming down, until you did. 

That was the “New Wrinkle.”  The apparatus had been programmed to forgotten flushing, causing the equipment to remain up there, standing aloft, like some vertical rebuke. 

It occurred to me that my Toto toilet apparatus was mocking me, because I had forgotten to flush.  (The phone rang, for heaven’s sake!)  And I was certain it was tattling on me, spreading word of my humiliation to our other “facilities”, via some inexplicable form of “Mental Toilepathy.”

I was bound and determined to set things straight.  No toilet seat would show me up in my own house.  Making me a laughingstock to all of my plumbing.

Determined to regain the upper hand, I ingeniously devised my retribution. 

With the high-tech apparatus resting unaware, I deliberated stepped up to the bowl.  And the lid automatically went up.  I walked away, and it dutifully came down.  I came back, it went up.  I walked away, it went down.  Having – ha-hahhhh – absolutely no say in the matter whatsoever.

Rubbing it in, I repeated the process, again and again.  Step up – it went up.  Walk away, it went down.  Up – again, up.  Away – again, down.  I just kept doing it, seeming crazily unable to get enough.

I was unquestionably in control.  The equipment was the hapless recruit, doing push-ups.  And I was the implacable Drill Sergeant, saying how many.

Order has been restored the universe.  And there is contentment in my heart.

I’ve got you, Toto toilet seat.  I just step up in front of you…

And you’re mine.