No good day starts without a satisfying session on the can. Quite literally, poor digestion could be a matter of life and death!
But more than anything, the time you spend in the loo could be the precious few minutes in the day you can take out for yourself. It is one you can be truly alone with your thoughts (too bad if a partner or roommate is banging on the door, asking you to hurry up!).
While the time you spend in the toilet may not make for great dinner table conversation, it is good time to spend by yourself and think of the marvels of the world. Some of these marvels, not so incidentally, are about that precious throne you find yourself sitting on.
Here are some interesting facts to ponder while you attend to the call of nature:
Fact #1: The Average Time Spent
On an average, a healthy person with a functional digestive system uses the toilet about 2,500 times in one year. If they spend 20 minutes on the can in a day and an average person’s lifespan is 80 years, then it means that an individual spends about 13 months of their life on the crapper!
So the next time someone grimaces or feels awkward when you say something socially unsanitary, let them know of this math so they can start treating the small room with a little more respect.
Fact #2: Public Toilet Habits
If you ever walk into a public toilet and are using the hit and trial method to see which cubicle is the cleanest, you can cut your losses and simply go into the first cubicle. Using the first cubicle is your best bet that you are sitting on a (relatively) cleaner toilet seat. This is because people tend to use last cubicle or a cubicle further in for greater privacy. After all, nobody wants to be heard while trying to use the loo!
Since the first cubicle is less used, it also means fewer bottoms have been placed on the toilet seat, making it the cleanest in an average row of cubicles.
Fact #3: The Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 1973
Have you ever finished with your business on the toilet and then reached out to get some toilet paper, only to realize you have run out? If you were a family or individual with enough foresight (and inclination to give into a panic) in 1973, you would not run out of toilet paper. Not for a few months at least, as people were loading up on toilet paper in a rumored toilet paper crisis in the United States. It is believed one of the major triggers for the crisis was television host Johnny Carson, who spoke of an alleged toilet paper shortage that was gripping the nation, on the Tonight Show.
Carson was referring to a hilarious rumor gave into an actual shortage in a post-war economy that had seen long periods of shortages until a few years ago!
Final Thoughts
The time you spend on the can is a good time to self-reflect, expand your imagination and read up on the happenings around the world. The toilet facts listed above, in some ways, check off all those things. You can self-reflect on which cubicles you end up using when you visit a public toilet or how you spend an entire year of your life in the toilet!
If nothing else, the toilet paper crisis of 1973 is a great ice breaker!