by Levi S. Johnston

Created on: May 19, 2009   Last Updated: October 08, 2010

Gender-Related Perspectives on Bathroom Cleanliness

Between our toilet and the bathroom counter sets a toilet brush. This is one of those fancy kinds of toilet brushes that has its own storage cylinder that helps hide the fact from your house guests that you even need to use-nay, own-a toilet brush. (The common "courtesy" of hiding the toilet-fixing tools is always a point of great turmoil for me when visiting someone's bathroom, as I often do. Somehow that is always the very time when the toilet decides to overflow, not flush, or leave behind too many signs of me having been there.)

Upon placing the brush side into its place in the storage cylinder, you can rotate the handle and the brush disappears inside like a spy into a secret bookcase passageway, hiding away until it is needed once again. Of course, the next time you realize you need a toilet brush, you forget that the white thing in the corner with the long handle sticking up is a toilet brush, so you end up going to buy another, more normal one.

In the odd event that you eventually remember that you have a futuristic, Bond-esque toilet-scrubbing device, the enclosure has long since sealed up from the oozing, unspeakable horror that was on the brush the last time it was put away, an alien substance cementing the brush to the frame.

In the corner where the brush contraption and the bathroom counter meet, resting atop the brush cylinder is a single, wadded ball of toilet paper. I do not know whether or not this toilet paper has ever been used. Certainly it has not ever been moistened as it still seems to have that cottony fresh look about it. In fact, the top portion that I can see is still completely white.

However, this little ball has been there for at least a month now, maybe more. It has occurred to me a few times to do something about it, but as I am of the male portion of the human species, that quickly ricochets to some other random thought that makes me forget whatever it was I happened to be thinking of at the time. Thus, I leave behind the restroom and the lonely ball of lint-free two-ply.

For some reason, though, a new thought sprung to my mind as I was in the restroom recently. Why is that my wife has not seen and subsequently done away with that little piece of litter? Understand, it's not that I think it is her place or purpose in society as a woman to make sure the restroom is clean. In our household, though, we do have our own responsibilities that we have divided somewhat in the

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