Dying for the Toilet

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This story was inspired by a photo someone shared on their Facebook wall. See photo below.

There’s only one toilet in the whole place, but I really don’t fancy using it. It’s clean enough, and private enough but there is a problem. You see directly above the toilet attached to the wall in one of the most precarious balancing acts I’ve seen since my last visit to Cirque du Soleil, is an old washing machine. I’ve seen some funky space saving ideas in my time, but who in their right mind thinks a wall-mounted washing machine is a good idea? Let alone hanging it right above the toilet bowl ready to drop on the head of some unsuspecting user.

I’ve often thought that dying on a toilet would not be a great way to go. Elvis did it, but even he didn’t really make it cool. I know that when you are dead you can’t be embarrassed, but still it does seem like the ultimate in shame. Being discovered with your trousers around your ankles or your tights at your knees . And how about the poor person who finds the body; an already a traumatic experience has just been made worse by seeing the dangling genitalia of the dead, not to mention their unflushed detritus.

Then there’s the matter of which toilet you are found on. Your own toilet would be bad enough, but imagine dying on a toilet in a shopping centre or at the cinema. The privacy of your death kicked down by a concerned security guard while onlookers take snaps for their Facebook walls.  You are almost certain to make page three of the local newspaper. Not the kind of posthumous fame you were looking for. Then you can then up the ante a bit. Using the toilet at the very moment a train crashes or a bus careers off the road. The rescuers have to cut your body free from the tiny cubicle in which you died, your pre-coffin coffin.

But that would be nothing compared to being crushed to death by a washing machine whilst attending to a call of nature. Having them find your hairy legs sticking out from the machine like some warped version of the wicked witch of the east. How do the nuts and bolts and raw plugs hold the bloody thing up there? Surely years of spin cycles must have loosened the fixtures making a catastrophic accident a forgone conclusion. It is just a matter of time. When not if and knowing my luck it would be when I was sitting there.  Sure to make the front page not page three of the South Wales Echo. I decided against taking the risk, after all you only live once and I’m not quite ready to end this once in a lifetime opportunity.