Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (70 page)

RIDDLE ME THIS

Q:
What singular English word becomes plural when you add an “s”, but singular again when you add another “s”?

A:
Prince. (Prince + s = princes. Princes + s = princess.)

Small comfort: Short people typically outlive tall people.

A few random origins, eh?

B
OB AND DOUG MCKENZIE

SCTV
was a popular Canadian comedy show similar to
Saturday Night Live
. In 1975 the show’s producer told writers Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas to come up with a two-minute skit with “identifiable Canadian content.” They thought that was a ridiculous idea, so as a spoof, they created a fictional talk show,
The Great White North
, featuring the fictional McKenzie Brothers, two beer-drinking tuque-wearing losers, as hosts. They put in every Canadian stereotype they could think of, and it was an immediate hit.
The Great White North
made Moranis and Thomas international stars. As Bob and Doug, they recorded a million-selling album, starred in a spin-off movie, and were made members of the Order of Canada for their “contributions to Canadian culture.”

CANADA’S NATIONAL COLORS

During the Crusades (1095–1291), European soldiers wore cloth crosses as badges. French soldiers wore red crosses; the English wore white. When Canada created its coat of arms in 1921, it was made red and white to reflect both its English and French heritage. The red-and-white maple leaf flag was adopted in 1965.

TIM HORTONS

Tim Horton was the Toronto Maple Leafs’ star defenseman for 17 years and helped the team win four Stanley Cups. In 1964 he invested in a small doughnut shop in Hamilton, Ontario. He continued to play hockey while his business partner Ron Joyce gradually expanded the shop into a large chain. In 1974 Horton died in a car accident, and soon after Joyce bought out the Horton family’s stake in the chain. But Joyce kept the name: by then it was a household word. Today, there are approximately 2,400 Tim Hortons doughnut shops in Canada—one shop for every 12,500 people. That’s more per capita than there are outlets of Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, and McDonald’s in the United States
combined
.

The brain continues to send electrical wave signals up to 37 hours after death.

When Uncle John was a kid, Mama John used to tell him to lower the toilet lid before he flushed. “Why?” he’d ask. “Because I said so,” she’d answer. Here’s an even better reason—the “aerosol effect.”

T
HE FOUNTAIN

Every time you flush the toilet with the lid open, hundreds of tiny water droplets spray out of the bowl, traveling as far as eight feet in an invisible cloud, carrying with them millions of viruses and bacteria. Scientists refer to it as the “aerosol effect.”

Everything in the bathroom is affected: the toilet (lid, seat, and handle), toilet paper, floor, walls, and ceiling—often neglected during cleaning, which allows bacteria to thrive for months, even years—and anything else within range, including your toothbrush. Even if you wash your hands immediately, germs can land on you and stay there until your next shower. You also run the risk of inhaling the airborne particles (which can stay in the air for more than two hours) and having them settle in your lungs.

University of Arizona biologist Charles Gerba has spent 20 years studying the aerosol effect. He analyzes dishrags and sponges from homes, washcloths from hotels, and towels from swimming pools. Some germs that can be spread with an open-lid flush: E.coli and shigella bacteria, streptococcus, staphylococcus, hepatitis A, and the common cold, to name a few. You’re most likely to find them under the toilet seat or in the sink, where it’s moist.

TRY THIS AT HOME

According to Gerba, you can test the aerosol effect on your toilet at home. Put a colorful yet harmless substance (such as mouthwash or food coloring) in your toilet bowl. Flush the toilet, holding a piece of white paper over the bowl at different levels and angles to see exactly where and how far your toilet water travels.

The best way to avoid the aerosol effect: put the lid down like your mother told you, says Gerba. What about in public restrooms where there are no lids? Relax—it’s a toilet, not a landmine. Wash your hands with soap and water and you’ll be fine. (But it might not hurt to hold your breath while you’re in there, too.)

First time the sound of a flushing toilet was heard on the big screen:
Psycho
(1960).

One of Uncle John’s favorite movies is the 1956 classic
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
So imagine his horror (and delight) when he found this article by Alan J. Stein about an incident that occurred in Washington in 1954. Stein’s acccount, which appeared in Seattle’s
History Ink,
is remarkably similar to the movie plot. The only difference: this one really happened
.

I
T BEGINS

The strange phenomenon started in late March, 1954, when tiny pits in automobile windshields were first reported to police in the northwestern Washington community of Bellingham. The small size of the pits led police officers to believe that the damage had been the work of vandals using buckshot or BBs. Then, within a week, a few residents in Sedro Woolley and Mount Vernon, 25 miles south of Bellingham, also began noticing damage to their windshields. By the second week of April, the “vandals” had attacked farther south in the town of Anacortes on Fidalgo Island. Losing no time, all available law enforcement officers in the area sped to town in the hope of apprehending the culprits. Roadblocks were set up south of town, and all cars leaving or entering the city were given a detailed once-over, as were their drivers and passengers.

To no avail.

THEY’RE GETTING CLOSER!

Farther south, cars at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Oak Harbor were discovered to have the same mysterious dings. Nearly 75 Marines made an intensive five-hour search of the station looking for evidence—anything that might lead to the source of the mystery. They came up empty, yet by the end of the day, more than 2,000 cars from Bellingham to Oak Harbor were reported as having been damaged.

Two things became abundantly clear: This could not be the work of roving hooligans; and whatever was causing windshield pits and dings was rapidly approaching Seattle.

Entrance fee to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair: 50¢.

SEATTLE UNDER SIEGE

On the morning of April 14, Seattle newspapers ran front-page reports of the events that had transpired to the north. The afternoon papers carried similar stories. At 6 p.m. a report came in to Seattle police that three cars had been damaged in a lot at 6th Avenue and John Street. At 9 p.m. a motorist reported that his windshield had been hit at North 82nd Street. Then the floodgates opened.

Motorists began stopping police cars on the street to report windshield damage. Parking lots and auto sales lots were hit. Even police cars parked in front of precinct stations suffered damage. Extra clerks were brought into the stations to answer the flurry of calls from angry and perplexed car owners. By the next morning, windshield pitting had reached epidemic levels.

GLASS MENAGERIE

The sheer number of the damaged windshields ruled out hoodlums, and experts couldn’t explain these strange pits and holes appearing out of nowhere. On Whidbey Island, Sheriff Tom Clark postulated that radioactivity released by recent H-bomb tests in the South Pacific was peppering windshields. Geiger counters were run over windshield glass, but all were free of radioactivity. Still, the sheriff held firm that “no human agency” could have created the scars on the glass. Other theories abounded:

•
Some thought that the Navy’s new million-watt radio transmitter at Jim Creek near Arlington was converting electronic oscillations to physical oscillations in the glass. Navy Commander George Warren called this theory “completely absurd.”

•
Cosmic rays bombarding the Earth from the sun were considered, but since so little was known about cosmic rays, this theory could be neither proved nor refuted.

•
A mysterious atmospheric event was theorized (although no one could explain exactly what kind that would be).

•
A few people reported seeing the glass bubble right before their eyes, leading some to postulate that sand-flea eggs had somehow been laid in the glass and were now hatching.

•
Alternative suggestions: supersonic sound waves, non-radioactive coral debris from nuclear bomb tests, or a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field. Other folks simply blamed the event on gremlins.

A
gamomaniac
is someone obsessed with proposing marriage.
Now
will you marry me?

SAVE US, IKE!

By April 15, 1954, police were swamped with calls. Close to 3,000 windshields had been reported as being pitted, and no one knew what to do. Desperate, Seattle Mayor Allan Pomeroy first wired Washington Governor Langlie, and then President Eisenhower.

What appeared to be a localized outbreak of vandalism in damaged auto windshields and windows in northern Washington State has now spread throughout the Puget Sound area. Chemical analysis of mysterious powder adhering to damaged windshields and windows indicates the material may simply be spread by wind and not a police matter at all. Urge appropriate agencies be instructed to cooperate with local authorities on emergency basis.

Governor Langlie contacted the University of Washington asking a committee of scientists to investigate the phenomenon. The experts (from the environmental research laboratory, the applied physics laboratory, and the chemistry, physics, and meteorology departments) did a quick survey of 84 cars on the campus. They found the damage to be “overly emphasized,” and most likely “the result of normal driving conditions in which small objects strike the windshields of cars.” The fact that most cars were pitted in the front and not the back lent credence to their theory.

“Tommyrot!” remarked Dr. D. M. Ritter, a U. of W. chemist, after inspecting windshields and residue found on some of the cars. “There isn’t anything I know of that could be causing any unusual breaks in windshields. These people must be dreaming.”

PITFALLS

King County Sheriff Harlan Callahan disagreed. His deputies examined 15,000 cars throughout the county, and found damage to more than 3,000 of them. The sheriff and his deputies felt that this level of damage could not be explained by ordinary road use. They also claimed they’d found odd little pellets near some of the cars, and that the pellets reacted “violently” when a lead pencil was placed next to them. (Nobody knew what this meant, though.)

But further investigation by the Seattle Police Department disproved the deputies’ claims. The police determined that most of the dings pitted the windshields of older cars. In cases where auto lots were involved, brand-new cars were unpitted; used cars were. Although there were a few rare instances of “copycat” vandalism, most of the cases had a simple explanation: The pits had been there all along—only no one had noticed them until now.

The Dead Sea contains about 11,600,000,000 tons of salt.

The same reasoning applied to particulate matter found on windshield glass and near cars. It wasn’t radioactive debris, it was coal dust. These tiny particles had been drifting through Seattle’s air for years, only no one had ever looked closely at them before. And although the coal dust particles had nothing to do with the pitting, the populace at large finally noticed them—just as they noticed the window dings—for the very first time. Sergeant Max Allison of the Seattle Police crime laboratory declared that all the damage reports were “5 per cent hoodlum-ism, and 95 per cent public hysteria.” Puget Sound residents had become participants in a collective delusion.

And by April 17, 1954, pitting incidents abruptly ceased.

ONE FOR THE BOOKS

The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic of 1954 became a textbook example of collective delusion, sometimes referred to as “mass hysteria.” To this day, sociologists and psychologists refer to the incident in their courses and writings alongside similar events, such as Orson Welles’s
War of the Worlds
Martian invasion panic of 1938, and sightings of the “Jersey Devil” in 1909.

The Seattle pitting incident has all the key factors, including ambiguity, the spread of rumors and false but plausible beliefs, mass media influence, recent geopolitical events, and the reinforcement of false beliefs by authority figures (in this case, the police, military, and political figures). This combination of factors—added to the simple fact that for the first time people actually looked
at
their windshields instead of
through
them—caused the hubbub. No vandals. No atomic fallout. No sand fleas. No cosmic rays. No electronic oscillations. Just a bunch of window dings that were there from the start.

You probably have them on your car right now...but please don’t alert the media or your local police.

Q: What is
blennophobia
? A: The fear of slime.

This tweet little tale combines some of Uncle John’s favorite themes: historical figures, gullible reporters, and talking animals
.