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It occurred to me that I've never told the story of the toilets at my secondary school.
The sewer that ran under the boys' toilets was cracked and leaking. But they didn't find that out for years. So they assumed the terrible smell was our fault.
To begin with, they told us to aim properly at the urinal. But the stench continued.
Then, one morning at assembly, they sent the girls out early. The boys remained, with some trepidation. The headmaster went up to the lectern and told us that perhaps we didn't know how to use a urinal, because it's not something your parents teach you in toilet training, so he was going to explain it to us. It was the most horrendous assembly I can remember. I can't tell you much about the explanation: I tuned out after "Because of the shape of your penis..."
The stench continued.
At another assembly, we were told of the latest hypothesis: we must have been standing to urinate in the stalls, rather than at the uriñal. This practice was banned forthwith.
The stench continued.
They decided we weren't paying attention to the new ban. So they stuck signs saying "THINK!!" on the cisterns-- these were the old-fashioned kind, so the cistern was about at head height. Someone public-spirited added "FUCK" in marker pen to all the signs. This caused another assembly.
Somewhere around this point, people began using toilet paper in protest-- flushing entire rolls and so on. The result was a ban on toilet paper. For the next few years, if you were planning to do anything that might involve toilet paper, you were supposed to go to the school office and ask for some, then carry the roll through three corridors to the toilets, and take it back afterwards. It was a kind of public humiliation. It was easy to forget beforehand, and at least once I had to use graph paper from a previous maths lesson.
None of this seemed odd at the time. I take it not all schools were like mine?
The sewer that ran under the boys' toilets was cracked and leaking. But they didn't find that out for years. So they assumed the terrible smell was our fault.
To begin with, they told us to aim properly at the urinal. But the stench continued.
Then, one morning at assembly, they sent the girls out early. The boys remained, with some trepidation. The headmaster went up to the lectern and told us that perhaps we didn't know how to use a urinal, because it's not something your parents teach you in toilet training, so he was going to explain it to us. It was the most horrendous assembly I can remember. I can't tell you much about the explanation: I tuned out after "Because of the shape of your penis..."
The stench continued.
At another assembly, we were told of the latest hypothesis: we must have been standing to urinate in the stalls, rather than at the uriñal. This practice was banned forthwith.
The stench continued.
They decided we weren't paying attention to the new ban. So they stuck signs saying "THINK!!" on the cisterns-- these were the old-fashioned kind, so the cistern was about at head height. Someone public-spirited added "FUCK" in marker pen to all the signs. This caused another assembly.
Somewhere around this point, people began using toilet paper in protest-- flushing entire rolls and so on. The result was a ban on toilet paper. For the next few years, if you were planning to do anything that might involve toilet paper, you were supposed to go to the school office and ask for some, then carry the roll through three corridors to the toilets, and take it back afterwards. It was a kind of public humiliation. It was easy to forget beforehand, and at least once I had to use graph paper from a previous maths lesson.
None of this seemed odd at the time. I take it not all schools were like mine?
