The Urinator: Theory and Practice
I took Eli 5.11 to Dave & Buster's last week.Before we started playing games, he said he needed to pee, so we went to the bathroom. There was a row of five urinals, and they were all empty. Eli walked straight to the last one, against the wall.
Wait a minute, I thought. That's textbook urinal strategy.
If you're a guy, you know what I'm talking about. There is a standard strategy for selecting which urinal to use. In its most basic form, this strategy can be boiled down to a simple rule: don't get surrounded.
That's why selecting urinal #5, against the wall, is textbook. It guarantees you one side of privacy, plus (and this is important) it makes it highly likely that #4 will remain unoccupied, because any guy walking in is going to choose #1 (closest to the door, with the little privacy extender), and the guy after him is going to choose #3 (the last urinal with open space to either side). So unless there's some gigantic flood of customers into the bathroom, you're guaranteed privacy on both sides.
It's like chess, but with pee.
"Eli, why did you choose that urinal?" I asked.
"Because it was the most private," he said.
Bingo. Genetic urinal knowledge.
We decided to go eat, and the Margaret Mead in me decided to investigate further. "Okay," I said, lining up sugar packets in a row, "if we had five urinals, and two of them were being used--"
"Hold on," Eli 5.11 said. He grabbed two packets of Equal (blue) and put them in position next to the sugar packets. "So these are the guys," he said, setting up the table like this (ignore the dashes--they're just to create space):
X-----X------
1--2--3--4--5
(For orientation purposes, remember that beyond 5 is the side wall. #1 is the first urinal when you walk into the restroom.)
"All right," I said, "one and three are occupied. Where do you go?"
"That's easy," he said. "Five."
"Okay," I said, rearranging the packets. "Let's say that two and four are being used."
"Still five," he said.
Nice.
"Five and four are occupied," I said.
"One," he said, without hesitation. My son is a pee strategy genius.
"One more," I said. "Two and five are occupied. Where do you go?"
"One," he said. "There's that little wall that comes out." The privacy extender. Well done.
"Last one," I said. "Let's say that urinal one doesn't have the privacy extender, and three and four are occupied. Now what do you do?"
"Ooh, that's a tough one," Eli said, considering the packets on the table. I think I go with number two." His first strategic blunder, seemingly. That situation requires use of the first urinal.
"Why would you go there?" I asked.
"Well, I'm so small compared to a grown-up," he said. "Somebody walking in wouldn't even see me standing there." So he knows all the rules, but there are auxiliary rules when you're five.
The waitress walked up right then. "Oh, what are you guys doing with all those sugar packets?" she cooed.
"Talking about urinators," Eli 5.11 said.
"Oh, that's so, um, cute," she said, sprinting away in horror.
<< Home