My best friend from high school was sharing stories from college over winter break our freshman year. We were comparing dorms: hers had bathrooms with stalls so every private moment still felt pretty public, whereas my home at Ohio State had individual pods with entire walls and doors in between toilets.
For her, shit got real.
She offhandedly mentioned, "I just feel like I'm wasting so much toilet paper by putting in the bowl before I shit, ya know? Like one day I know I'm gonna accidentally clog the toilet."
That's when I realized.
Everyone has secret ways of shitting in public.
So then I, of course, started bringing up the conversation to everyone I knew to see what their method of shitting in public was, and voila. I have a list of all the possible ways you, too, can fearlessly shit in public. We all deserve it.
Put down toilet paper first
Let the shit fall softly onto the paper instead plopping into the water like those ice cubes in your Vodka cran last night. We know it's one of the reasons you've got the shits today.
Drop-n-Flush
This one's a classic. If the bathroom's busy, no one's going to be counting the number of times your stall flushes the toilet, and if the toilets are automatic sensors, they're definitely prone to "accidentally" go off multiple times during the transaction between booty and bowl. Plus, it becomes a competition with yourself to see how perfectly you can match up the flush to the landing.
Head to a different floor
11-story library? I'd bet floors 4-8 are the least visited in the building. Take a walk through every one, odds are one of them is bound to be empty. And if not, you will have waited so long to finally let loose that your body will force you to just pick one.
Find a single-room bathroom
This is an obvious answer but if you know your campus like the back of your hand, move your studying spot over to a cafe that has single-room bathrooms for ultimate comfort.
Grow up & let it rip
You know that old lady energy where they're so old they don't give a shit what people think of them and what they say and do? One of my friends has old lady energy, and not only does she not give a shit about what people think, but she gives all her shits when she's in public bathrooms. It's a bathroom, right? Its purpose is literally for this. No shame.
