My new house has a bidet.
Well, not just a bidet – a high-tech toilet with all the bells, whistles, and waterworks. A porcelain palace. A throne with a résumé.
It’s a lot. A lot more than this Southern boy’s behind is used to.
This thing… As one approaches the commode to do their business, the lid just opens right up. When we first visited this house, we entered the master bathroom and there was this whirring sound as we walked in. Then the lid just opened up all by itself like some sort of psychic waste-removing robot. Because everyone wants to be startled upon walking into their own bathroom. Nothing says “welcome home” like being greeted by a gaping appliance with an agenda.
I was not prepared. I moved in yesterday and am still not prepared. As I write this, tonight will be our first night in the house, so I still haven’t experienced the shock I am certain I will experience the first time I have to wake up at 3 a.m. to relieve myself. I think the bowl lights up too, but I cannot confirm that. If you hear a scream from my end of the neighborhood in the wee hours, don’t call anybody. That’s just me making the confirmation.
Got a minute? Got a story. Early in our marriage – during the before times prior to the Wild Things arriving – Honey Doodle bought a Christmas decoration for our downstairs bathroom.
It was a snowman from Hallmark. It was also motion activated and was both jolly and obscene. She did not tell me about this purchase before planting it on the back of our toilet, so I opened the door to make a little water and all of a sudden this creepy male voice starts singing “Ho ho ho, who’s gotta go, Ho ho ho, who’s gotta go-oh…” I jumped back and did what I was supposed to be doing in the bathroom right there in my pants. That snowman turned a routine restroom run into a seasonal serenade and a load of laundry, all in one visit.
Honey Doodle just giggled and giggled like her husband of just two years going into cardiac arrest in the downstairs bathroom was just the funniest thing on earth.
And then, she had to go and get a chronic illness where she could literally die if scared bad enough, so I can’t even get any sort of husbandly payback. The pranking privileges in this marriage are permanently one-sided, and I am the side that pays.
Anyway, back to the luxury toilet that greeted us in our new home.
In addition to the blast of cold water, in an area cold water has yet to travel – a frigid frontier, if you will – the toilet has a few other features. First of all, it has a remote control that hangs on the wall. It occurred to me that one could take said remote one evening and wait for his wife to use the powder room and just randomly press buttons. One could. One is medically and maritally prohibited from doing so. (See previous paragraph.) But one has thought about it. At length.
Anyway, the toilet warms up the seat for you before you sit down. I’ve never had a heated seat before. Feels like going to the public restroom at a popular Mexican restaurant. Not sure I like it.
It also has a jet of air that you use to dry off after your derriere has been soaked thoroughly – a breezy backside blow-dry, courtesy of the house. What it does not have – or what I have not found yet – is an off button. The water turns off when you turn the blower on, and both turn off if you stand up. In other words, the only escape is surrender.
That is a level of pampering that I did not ask for and may never get used to.
Also, the seat closes after you have finished, because it’s the polite thing to do. Somewhere out there is an engineer who raised this toilet with better manners than most of the people I went to high school with.
Yes, it is weird and I’m sure this column was TMI. I also know my readers, and know that most of you love reading columns with copious amounts of bathroom humor and you seem to all really enjoy laughing at my expense – so, here’s to you. Consider this my public service. My civic doody, if you will.
Anyway, my take on the million dollar toilet is this: Someone else bought it, and it does actually work incredibly well. So, with the price of everything going up, at least I will have a savings on toilet paper. And if another pandemic comes, or some other bizarre emergency happens that has people hoarding toilet paper again, I’ll be just fine. While the rest of you are wrestling strangers for the last twelve-pack of two-ply, I’ll be sitting pretty on my porcelain palace, warm, washed, and blow-dried – a pampered prince of the privy.
Columnist’s Note: Since the writing of this column, I have discoverd that the water temperature can, in fact be controlled, and I am no longer freezing my fanny off.
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
- B.T. Clark
- B.T. Clark
- B.T. Clark
- B.T. Clark
