I hate to start a blog post with profanity, but, seriously, who the fuck looks over the wall? Like, everyone knows you don’t do that. Everyone. As in, literally every person on the planet knows this. But it happened anyway. To me. Today.

So, to catch you up, here’s what happened:

I’m at work. It’s about an hour in, plus with an hour’s drive to get there (thanks to the awesome new move my company did that they didn’t ask my two cents about). So, yeah, two hours since I woke up, had a drive, did some work, and quaffed a Pepsi—no I don’t drink coffee, but do appreciate caffeine—and it’s still only 7:17 a.m.

So there I am, in need of my, erm, morning constitutional. Peristalsis doing its magic in my bowels, etc., and, like all regular and predictable processes in the universe, like sun rises and carbon half-life, and all those things in nature which can be counted on and predictable, it was time for me to drop a deuce.

So there I am, in the crapper. At work. Yes. I did that. Get over yourself. People do that. It’s a thing. So anyway, I was in there, doing my thing. I had the advantage of the handicap stall—I love that one, big and roomy … I’m a big guy, and there’s some extra elbow room, some leg room, plus I’m not jammed between two metal panels like a goddamn veal calf. Love it. (Oh, and go fuck yourself if you are judging me for using that one. Seriously. Stop reading. You don’t deserve this story.)

Anyway, I’m minding my own business, whole bathroom to myself, when in comes some douche. I hear the door, then some footsteps. Being a regular, I know how many steps it takes for someone to come in, round the bend, then get to one of the two urinals that are on the wall closest to the door. Five to six steps is urinal. More than that means coming to one of the two actual crappers.

So homeboy decides a piss ain’t good enough, and he’s on his way to the commodes. Fine. Whatever. I’m done anyway. Soon as I realize he’s at the section of the bathroom where the thrones are, I’m starting to wrap up mentally. I’m not going to tag-team dump.

I’m starting to close down my game—not that I’m saying I play video games on my phone or whatever when I’m in there. Obviously I do not waste company time, etc.—but, hypothetically, if I were to do something like that, I would have been starting to wrap it up.

But then I see his shoes.

They’re black leather, dress shoes. Not expensive, but, you know, office douche shoes. I see them because they’re right near the partition between the two crapper stalls. He’s standing at the door of “normal” stall, the veal pen stall that is closer to the urinals and the entrance. I’m in the farthest stall, the epic and luxurious handicap one that people judge you for.

So at first, whatever. I see his shoes, he’s that close. The door to my nice stall is locked tight, and it’s obvious, the door flush with the frame, obviously closed and barred. So he stops at that first, veal pen stall, shoes pointed to go in, but then those f-ing shoes turn. Rather than just going in on his first f-ing instinct, he turns just enough to be pointing his feet toward me.

I was like, in those sort of dream-vision thought process, realizing it. It was like, too fast to actually think the thoughts, I just knew that his feet turned because he wanted a piece of my stall. He wasn’t satisfied to take that one he was standing at.

And then he did it. The worst thing any human can ever do:

He looked over the goddamn wall.

Here’s these two brown-ass eyes, looking right the fuck at me. And I looked at them. I fucking saw him. We had goddamn eye contact. I’m taking a goddamn shit and this asshole is fucking looking right at me. Goddamn eye contact.

What serious fuck is that? I can’t even swear often enough or loud enough to capture how unbelievable that moment was.

Who does that?

You look for the fucking shoes. Everyone knows that. You stoop and look for shoes.

Or maybe you do the door-crack eye slide. You know, you walk by, see if you can see a body through the tiny gap between the door. That’s fine.

It’s even acceptable to, you know, wiggle the door. Or knock. “Hey, anyone in here?” Even the dreaded fingers-over-the-edge attempt to open the door is acceptable, if not ideal. Right?

I mean, you’re there, crapping, all of a sudden some ape-fingers come over the door, they ape-rattle the door, then it doesn’t open, so that person’s ape-brain realizes it’s occupied and they move on. Fine. Any of that is fine.

But you never actually look over the goddamn wall. It doesn’t matter how tall you are. You just don’t do it.

But he did.

And that’s not even the worst part.

Now you all know and love me for my acerbic wit and fine, razor sharp sarcasm. So, obviously, I eviscerated him on the spot, right?

No.

No, I did not. I looked into those eyes, and I was like, “Uh …” and, after that half second pause, I managed, “Wha … Uh … who looks over the wall?” It was lame.

So, yeah. I said that. “Who looks over the wall?”  That was my genius response.

And it wasn’t even all cool and snarky. Not even in, like, a manly bass voice. I mean, it might have been cool if I said it like that actor who played Saruman in the Lord of the Rings movies, all deep and, like, “Who looks over the wall, fool?” Maybe gangster would have been good. “Bitch, wtf? Who looks over the wall?” But, nope. Not at all. It was kind of high, like, whiny in my throat, chick-like. Just straight, unfiltered bewilderment with zero cool or masculinity.

…

But seriously, who the fuck does that? What actual, human person across of all of time, ever, in any place in all of history and human experience, has ever … EVER … looked over the goddamn shitter-stall wall? Like, ever?

Like, seriously, ever?

WTF?

So there I am, looking at this asshole, my game half shut down. My white ass sparkling for his consideration on either side of my squat, and, startled, I eject that piece of brilliance when he looked at me. “Who looks over the wall?” I say.

He vanished of course. Like a whack-a-mole kind of thing, except lightning fast. Peek. Sees me. Ducks back. I ejaculate that stupid line.

His reply: “My bad.”

Yep, that’s what he said. “My bad.”

That was the entirety of his response. His whole acknowledgement.  His apology. “My bad.” He breaks one of the central tenants of all human existence, one the core laws of physics and probably even God and stuff, and that’s all he’s got for an apology. “My bad.”

Again I say:  W.  T.  F.  ?

So anyway, there I was, sort of like, wounded. Trying to get out of there. He didn’t care. He just went into the veal-pen stall and went about his business (very noisy … and, btw,  in case he is reading this: Hey, Asshole, flushing as you commenced didn’t hide anything, and I heard it all. God was punishing you, and he saw what you were going to do to me today last night. Which is why he made you eat whatever the hell that was rocketing out of you this morning. It sounded really uncomfortable and you deserve it.)

But yeah, I feel like I should have said more, should have confronted him beyond my feeble exclamation. But I just wanted to leave. I kind of limped out there, a victim, violated.

I realized as I made my walk-of-shame way back to our offices that I was glad I didn’t see his face.

What if I had?

What if I now have to see that guy walking down the hallways all the time. I would see him and know that was the guy who watched me copping a squat. I’d know he’d seen me. Pants around the ankles. White, dimply ass (side view, sure, but still), cranking out a deuce at the same time as I attacked someone’s Clash of Clans town. He might as well have come in and neutered me, wear the jewels around his neck ever afterwards.

How does one live with that?

But I didn’t see him. I truly couldn’t even pick him out of a line up—which he should be in, by the way. A cop line up before his arrest and execution … but I’ll get to that.

But I didn’t see him, so I don’t have to recognize him regularly and recall my shame. I suppose I will hear the snickers now, though. I already imagine walking by some pack of guys, maybe the smokers outside in the cancer camaraderie by the front doors. I’ll hear the tee-hee-hee of their ridicule. I’ll hear it like in fifth grade. I won’t decipher the whispered words, but I’ll know what they say: “Har-har. I seen that fat bastard pinching one, har-dee-har. His ass is so pale. Like, they could make a sleepy-ass Disney princess out of it and call her So White. Make all the dwarves kiss it. Har-har-har. He even lost his army on that last Clash of Clans attack. Har-har-har.”

Etc.

I tried to let all this go. A whole day to reflect. But I’ve decided that we need an amendment to the Constitution. Everyone is arguing about the 2^nd Amendment right now. Honestly, the Second Amendment is, well, number 2. Like, literally. But they need to make the number 2 amendment address, well, an actual number 2. We could call it the Constitutional Constitutional Amendment.

“We hereby decree that thou shall not look over the goddamn stalls in a bathroom if someone is having their daily constitutional or thou shalt be fucking shot in the face.”

You will notice that my new version still includes guns. Very important, and in keeping with tradition. Americans need the freedom to shoot anyone who looks over the goddamn wall in the face. Let’s be honest, there is not one person in the whole country that can argue against that point.

Or something.

Bleh.

Assholes. The whole world is filled with assholes.