You're Too Old Not To Find This Hilarious
You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!
On meaning well, and slightly missing the mark
If it’s Thursday, this must be Ecuador.
It is.
God I love being on the road again. I miss new cultures and I was hungry to explore.
Today I had a meeting with a new friend about two blocks down the street from the Hostal Latino, which is in downtown Cuenca. This is one fine city, high in the Andes, socked in with clouds and currently raining.
It’s been a while since I’ve been to South America. Last time was Chile in November 2022 for my last big horse adventure in the Atacama Desert, just before I began the foot repairs. Those have largely kept me from overseas adventures for a while.
My Spanish is so rusty it has disintegrated, but I can largely make myself understood. The culture, though…I can’t speak for anyone else but I so dearly love the architecture, the hanging flower baskets, the open plazas where people sip coffee for hours.
That’s what I was doing. I’d had a lot of liquid in fact, as Ecuadorian coffee is famous and famously inexpensive here. So I gulped down plenty.
That, for anyone, especially those of us girls past sixty, has a side effect. Eventually, well, you know.
So when things got desperate, my coffee date pointed at two doors at the back of the plaza, well marked. I made my swift way in that direction.
The security guard guarding the toilets- you read that right- waved me down and explained that I needed a key.
He also kindly waved down a waiter who was at that moment busy with other guests. So I had to wait until he saw the guard, saw me bouncing up and down in front of the door, and eventually got back inside for the key.
The waiter came running (he got a bigger tip for that).
The door released, popped open, and I popped inside, grateful.
Two handicapped toilets were suddenly illuminated, their private doors wide open, as the motion-sensor light came on.
Ecuador is one of the few international places that recognizes that aging White tourists need such accommodations. Cuenca is full of aging White folks.
Grateful and in immediate need of relief, I chose a stall and closed the door.
The motion sensor light immediately went out.
Hello? I said to the pitch-black room. Nothing.
Waved my arms. I didn’t dare jump up and down.
Nothing.
If you’ve ever been in military boot camp and had to memorize the drawer next to your bunk so that you can dress and make the bed before reveille, you know how to memorize a space.
That was fifty-one years ago, but I had a wicked memory. I felt my way to relief, still waving my arms, now laughing.
Makes peeing ever so much easier, does humor.
I never did locate the toilet paper (upon inspection, it was empty. Blessedly, so was I, but I had use the shake and bake method to air dry.)
I nearly clotheslined myself at the gut when I misjudged the toilet safety bar, but at least the light came back on when I re-opened the door.
My coffee date and I had a lovely laugh. Of course I had to use it again. This time I memorized the location of everything, including the safety bar, and brought napkins.
In this city, it serves to schlep your own TP.
I tried the other stall, which did precisely the same thing. The moment I closed the door, lights out.
If you can’t find stuff like this funny, stay home.
It’s wonderful that buildings are working hard to cut waste in power usage, especially since droughts caused significant blackouts last year. I’m all in.
The only down side is that if you’re hoping to entice more aging White tourists, just providing handicapped toilets isn’t quite enough. For safety’s sake, for oldsters with bad eyes, questionable balance and wonky hips, a little light on the subject helps a great deal.
As Tom Bodett intones for Motel Six,
“We’ll leave the light on for ya…”
Oh yes. That top picture? Kudos to the guy who had the nerve to design it and even more kudos to the building owner who ordered them.
That said, along the same lines, what did you design for us women?
Let’s play, let’s laugh, and don’t let the bastards get you down.
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Wonderful! I would have been laughing, too.
Thanks for a much needed laugh!