Guys, who says the world is your urinal?

There is an urgent need to train the boy child on how to use a urinal.

I have had a long-standing affair with urinals and I can tell you that it is one of the most carelessly used facilities in this town.

You should see me hopping and jumping, trying to avoid puddles and splashes. Maybe it has to do with the kind of training (or is it lack of training?) that we get as young boys.

We are taught to pass water anywhere. It does not matter where the urge strikes us, as long as there is a fence, post, tree, or ditch, we are at home. Recently, at a matatu stage, I saw a parent — a woman, make no mistake, encourage her son to relieve himself by the roadside, in full public view.

WATERING THE NATION

When he finished, I saw the boy “shaking after use” nonchalantly. No wonder urinals are in an appalling condition.

If you were brought up in the rural areas, where mud-walled houses were common, you will recall that popular game we played with our, ahem, steaming jets, trying to dissolve a portion of the wall. We also tried to see who could shoot the highest urine loop and once in a while aimed for one another.

With this kind of childhood practice, it is no wonder then that men find any bush worth watering.

Humourist Wahome Mutahi called it watering the nation. A caution, if you are one of those men who are fond of watering the nation, stay away from electricity posts.

The other day, a friend saw a man get electrocuted after he watered a live wire. This friend, who confessed that he has watered the nation in the past, swore that he would never do it again.

Back to urinals and why boys need to be taught how to use them. First and foremost, the main challenge the users of this facility have is aiming and approximation of distance.

The result is dripping walls, puddles, and streams, which are quite irritating and a put-off for the responsible user. Reaching the trough without stepping into the puddles is almost impossible.

So, the dilemma is: do you play responsible citizen and wade through to get to the trough or do you join in missing the mark?

Obviously, some people have never lost the urge to shoot high, even decades later.

But this is not the only way urinals are defaced and misused. Before social media came to save us by making communication easier, urinals were used to pass messages.

PRIVATE MATTERS

In college, we were treated to all kinds of graffiti on urinal walls. Apart from the witty, “shake well after use” and “Che Guevara was here”, there were constant appeals for romance, which baffled me because only male students visited the urinal — unless... I also wondered when these jokers wrote these messages, unless they waited until the dead of night when everyone else was asleep.

I digress.

Every responsible parent should teach their son that some things are better done in private, for instance answering a call of nature. Girls know they should not squat by the roadside to relieve themselves, why shouldn’t boys?

The fact is that it is not okay to urinate on other people’s flower beds, trees, ditches, and other places that we men think were made for us.

If anything, consider the environment you are degrading. But if you still insist on doing it in public, please do not shake my hand when you are done.