First Things First

OK, before anything else happens, I want everyone to run to the closest deli and immediately buy a pint of Haagen Dazs White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle ice cream.

There. Now doesn't everybody feel better? When I am on my deathbed, I think someone should stand by to wave a pint of it under my nose. Wow! Look! Resurrection! (At least until I polish off the pint.)

I am very curious about something. Lately, within the last year or so, I've noticed these signs turning up on the stall door in ladies' rooms all over the place . They say, "Please flush the toilet."

Um, when did that become a problem? Surely it's an automatic gesture for anyone who grew up in a place with flush toilets? (I say this because I used to work in a building whose previous life had been a sweatshop that hired VERY recent immigrants, and those toilets had signs like that in English and something that looked like Asian calligraphy, which made sense to me because I'm sure a lot of those poor girls did NOT grow up with flush toilets.)

But really, almost without exception, I do my temping in large expensive law firms. The ladies in the bathrooms are lawyers or legal secretaries, all of whom are thoroughly educated, and most of whom have fairly advanced degrees. (You laugh at that regarding the secretaries, but legal secretarial work is a lot more lucrative than anything that uses your Master's in English Lit.) Why on earth should these gals need to be reminded to flush the toilet? How has this become a problem? And WHY has it become a problem? Call me deeply confused. And I'm even more confused by the fact that (ugh alert here) it so happens that at least once a week I enter a stall and discover that someone hasn't read the sign. What gives? I know damn well that there aren't all that many automatic flush type toilets floating about (oh, GOOD choice of words), so it's not that people have forgotten how to use a manual one...

And I've been reading the various forms of internet news (because I'm a news junkie) and I just came across a story about Merck, the big pharmaceutical company. They've issued a statement that they're going to do some in-depth testing of one of their asthma drugs because there have been about four cases of suicide in people who've been taking it. One can only hope that their testing is better than their English. The spokesman said that they were coming forward with this news "because suicide is a life-threatening activity."

I have nothing else to say, so in a rare burst of good sense, I think I'll go to bed. Remember to flush!

Love, Wendy