when i was in college i spent one year in a dorm. the name of the dorm was hudson hall. i lived on spencer floor. our mascot was a smiling spermatozoa holding a beer and since there were a bunch of us and a bunch of them (sperm) we were known as the spermies. so in full we were the hudson hall, spencer spermies. life rarely gets more predictable than this.

i worked most nights and drove home to see a girlfriend on weekends so was not very connected to my dorm-mates aside from a few that lived immediately around me. it seems in dorm-life different floors have squabbles and grudge matches. one floor did not like my floor very much. i don't think i had anything to do with this, not because of my good choices or bright spirit but because i wasn't around much. one night 7 to 10 guys from this other floor came down to our floor one after the other and emptied their bowels into one of our bathroom toilets. they never flushed, making deposits only. they didn't even use toilet paper (somehow). they just left a large porcelain cauldron of feces. by morning the matter had dissolved and settled, caving in on itself to form a flat and pristine looking object. i imagine through the night it was like a time-lapse study of how our world was formed over time only instead of needing billions of years, this model was architected between 3am and 8am.

in the morning a small group of boys from my floor stood outside the stall door wearing towels and bath robes, holding plastic bins of soap and shampoo. they talked quietly, but mostly looked in the stall. the number of comparisons between this small band of young men and the chimps in 2001 space odyssey were significant. first they all stood around deeply pondering the white structure. they struggled with where it came from, how it was made and what its purpose was. then one reached out and touched it. the result of that touch (in this case a flush) caused mass hysteria and they all shrieked and jumped and ran maniacally into one another trying to escape the resultant mayhem.

the reason this distantly-filed image has resurfaced in my mind is my children are currently employing the strategy of that innovative hudson hall floor by refusing to flush our family toilet. my childrens' technique is less sophisticated though in that they will put toilet paper and toothbrushes and play cars in the bowl. but like the boys in my story, they won't flush. i heard bella instruct the others that unless someone goes poo, this toilet is not to be flushed. i stepped forward to ask if five pees could equal one poo. i was told they cannot. and dismissed.