pee sitting down

No matter how much you love someone, once you start living with them minor irritations are bound to come to the surface. The object of your affections – that perfect specimen of a human being whose every movement used to be cute, sexy or endearing in some way – suddenly becomes just another person with flaws of their own. Perhaps they slurp their coffee too loudly. Maybe they have a habit of leaving hair in the plug-hole or not changing the toilet roll when the old one is finished. These minor issues are the kind of thing that we only come to notice after the initial “honeymoon” dating period when we were always dressed to impress and only have to keep our bad habits in check for the duration of a single evening at a time.

In a recent story about marital relations, Japanese website News Post Seven heard from both relationships experts and a number of married women who were distinctly irked by their husbands’ bad habits. While issues such as of a general lack of help with the housework or cooking frequently cropped up as the cause of arguments and unhappiness, one of the most common complaints made was of husbands making as mess while peeing. Told to take a seat while draining his spuds, however, one Japanese man was seemingly morally offended by the mere suggestion, stating that to pee standing up is “a matter of honour”.

“No matter how many times I tell him, he just doesn’t listen!” fumed 44-year-old housewife Miyako Suzuki, who claims that her husband always leaves the toilet seat up or forgets to close the lid after answering the call of nature.

But it’s not just that minor inconvenience that tests her patience: ”There’s always pee on the floor around the toilet, and yet he acts like it’s no big deal. At first I thought he probably just didn’t notice, but it smells! It’s filthy. I tell my 5-year-old son to take a step forward before doing a number one, but I can’t say the same to my husband. If I do, it ends in an argument and him saying, ‘You think I’m so old that I can’t even pee straight!?’”

Although this writer, too, is very likely guilty of having left a few stray drops around the outside of the toilet during his 30 years on this earth, I can’t help but empathize with Mrs. Suzuki here. Accidents do happen, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve walked into public restrooms here in Japan and found the floor in front of every single urinal doused with off-target urine. As a result, as I pee into the urinal from almost a foot away like I’m taking part in some kind of horrendous post-apocalyptic Olympic Games, I can’t help but wonder the exact same thing as Mrs. Suzuki: “Why the hell can’t these guys just take half a step forward before doing their business?”

But when he won’t even step a little closer to the plate, we’re not in the least bit surprised to hear that Mrs. Suzuki asking her husband to sit down to pee didn’t go down well. What we didn’t expect, however, was for him to bring issues of male pride and national identity into the argument:

“‘When I told him ‘You make a mess when you pee standing up, so could you sit down when you do it?’ he absolutely refuses, saying ‘I’m a Japanese-born male! It’s a matter of honour!’ I can’t believe how proud he is about something so trivial. This is an issue of ‘privates’, not ‘pride’…”

Should we men swallow our pride and take a seat for number one? Is Mr. Suzuki right in feeling that sitting down to take a Jimmy Riddle would be entirely emasculating? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

For now, I’ll leave you with a single line of verse that I once saw scrawled on the wall of the little boys’ room when I was just a kid. It’s hardly the finest piece of poetry ever penned, but it’s always steered me right, and I’m sure it will you.

“If you sprinkle while you tinkle, please be sweet and wipe the seat.”

May your aim be straight and true, gentlemen.

Source: News ポストセブン

Title image: Le Franco Phoney