The only time I’ve ever seen that was in the movie Full Metal Jacket (I joined the U.S. Navy in 1989 so either Navy boot camp was different from the Army’s version or it was just because I was going through basic training about 20 years after the recruits depicted in that movie were).
I thought having saltpeter put in our food (a rumor that circulated at the time) was meant to discourage wanking? I DO remember having a very suppressed sex drive while I was in boot camp. On the other hand you can’t cork a volcano…
I can poop pretty well wherever there is a toilet. My only requirements for public stalls is the commode be clean and that there be doors and walls separating me from other poopers.
While we’re on the subject, though. What about peeing? There are about a dozen empty urinals, and some stranger opts to take the one right next to you. I don’t know if they want to compare sizes, or what, but I’ve never figured out the rationale. Evidently they aren’t familiar with the rule of the buffer urinal.
I absolutely agree (I go when and where I need to), but I have also mastered the art of silent pooping. As I phrased it once previously, I could shit on Superman’s pillow and he’d only wake up for the smell.
I have the utmost respect for a colleague who walks down 6 flights of stairs, strolls about 100 yards, then climbs up 3 flights of stairs to take a daily crap in the washroom for the university’s senior administrators. He doesn’t do it for the privacy, either.
I concur. Even worse are those ultra-form-fitting toilet seats. Really, they’re more comfortable to sit on, I suppose, but there’s THAT MUCH MORE warm plastic in contact with my sitting muscles. People being the pigs they are, I always wipe the toilet seat, and with that sort I never feel like I’ve gotten the whole thing.
I’m guilty of using the handicapped stall on occasion. at my last office, the other two stalls were too narrow for anyone but a child to use without banging into the dividers while entering, fiddling with clothes, etc. Plus I’m tall enough that the taller toilets were a real help for me.
In my own defense, if I heard someone else coming into the restroom at all I’d hurry up and finish my business as quickly as possible. In that particular restroom, however, I had to wonder how someone would manage with a wheelchair - it didn’t seem like the stall was large enough for a wheelchair to fit!
I’m quite fond of alfresco micturition, so I have no doubt you’re right - when you have a nice wooden box. But my own experiences with dropping a deuce in the great outdoors have been more…fraught.
Many years and many pounds ago, I went at a wilderness school in Wyoming that emphasized minimizing impact on the environment. Which meant catholes for the month we camped. I was much skinnier then, but no more co-ordinated, and the wind ruffling my hair did not make up for the anxiety over whether my careful squat would give way to a catastrophic plunge.
In answer to the obvious question, I’ll just say that it’s surprising how clean one can get using a smooth rock. Also a handful of snow applied down under beats coffee all to hell as a wake-up.