Torture

I hate the sun. But here I am, sitting outside in the bright, hot, miserable sunlight, simply because a) the breeze feels nice, and b) I should probably get at least a little sun this summer before it disappears for months. Be proud. I'm facing my fears. Except it's not really a fear so much as a loathing. A simmering hatred that burns like old Spaghettios, put on the stove to cook and then forgotten until the stench of burnt tomato sauce permeates through the building, bringing pained tears to the eyes of anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity.

Yesterday, I was in my Alaska Native Languages class in the mining and engineering building--I have no idea why theywould schedule a linguistics course in a mining and engineering building, but whatever works--and my stomach started making weird noises. All through the class, it rumbled and whined and squeaked and made pretty much every other noise imaginable, which was rather embarrassing, particularly because the class only had about six students, so it was a small room and everyone kept smirking at me, but then remembering that they were too polite to just laugh it off so I could laugh too. I must remember never to eat at Taco Bell again.

Anyway, as soon as class ended, I wandered down the hall to find a restroom. For some reason, the architect who had designed the building had decided it would be a good idea to have the men's restroom in one corner of the building, and the women's in the other corner. (This was particularly surprising given that it was an engineering building, and I thought engineers were supposed to have a little more foresight than that. Doesn't having the bathrooms next to each other save a pretty good amount on piping and stuff when you build the building?) I eventually found the lady's room, which was blocked by a neat metal fire door which two stripes down the middle, like racing stripes. I'm not sure what purpose the stripes served, but I'm not really one to complain about something like that. I pushed the door open and walked in.

It was quite easily the most hideous and terrifying room I have ever been in. The room was trapezoidal, not quite rectangular. When you opened the door, which was somewhat narrow, you immediately found yourself facing a wall. The tiny passageway to the left narrowed distressingly, to the point where I could see it terrifying someone who was claustrophobic. The room was somewhat dim, but the worst part was the color. The stalls were the most horrendous shade of pink I had ever seen. It was like a pink that thought it might have dreams of being orange, but it couldn't quite figure out how to go about it, and it strained so hard that it vomited all over itself. The floor was a white and gray and pink tile pattern, with tiles maybe a half inch wide. The pink tiles came up just often enough to make it look like the floor was spattered with blood. Seriously, if someone were to design a torture chamber, one designed like this bathroom would be considerably more terrifying than a dark stone dungeon with sharp bloody objects all over the room and one or two ominously flickering torches bracketed to the wall.

I can't decide why someone would intentionally design a bathroom like that. The thought crossed my mind that maybe they just wanted to make sure people wouldn't try to cut class by hiding in the bathroom. But then I remembered that this is a university, not a middle school. If someone wanted to cut class, they would just leave. You don't HAVE to go to class. You just have to accept the consequences, which is usually just a worse grade in a class you paid several hundred dollars to take. The teachers aren't going to track you down, drag you to class, or send you to the principal, so seriously, what would be the point of cutting class by hiding in the bathroom? No, that can't be it. Maybe the room was originally used as a torture chamber by particularly sadistic teachers such as my public speaking teacher from last fall. I banished that idea from my mind too, simply because it wasn't a comforting thought to think while I was using it. I finally settled on the idea that maybe the architect was either a sadist or a masochist and simply wanted to terrify people. Thoughts?