I’ll never forget the first time I heard about waterless urinals.
It was the year 2000.
The Kochs had arrived back from the annual IAAPA convention all excited.
The guys, anyway.
Mrs. Koch cracked us up at the next directors meeting. Apparently Will and his dad were pretty fired up about these new-fangled guy potties.
"That’s all they talked about — all dinner long," Mrs. Koch wailed. "And we were in a really nice restaurant with other park people. All the men talked about were urinals!"
Oh, how embarrassing.
I felt my cheeks burn with a deep … flush.
Before long, I got over my mortification and pitched a story to the trades. Indeed, Holiday World was breaking ground again. Just one year after introducing "Free Unlimited Soft Drinks" to the industry, we were the first park to add these mysterious new waterless urinals.
Cause and effect.
For some reason, the coaster enthusiasts seemed particularly enthralled with the news. The female enthusiasts demanded to see what was going down. So when we held our annual coaster-riding event for them that May, we made special arrangements.
A tour.
We called it the "Ladies Only V.I.Pee Tour."
Will and Mrs. Koch headed the tour, armed with Super Soakers. At one point after explaining the inner workings of the waterless wonders (in his customary scientific manner), Will was suddenly overcome with embarrassment, hung his head and sort of stood in the corner. (A urinal-free corner.)
Flash forward a decade.
This morning, Will sent me this photo, marked "Must-blog: Pixie Urinal."
All I could think was, "Here we go again."
Here is Will’s wee tale:
We were meeting today with a vendor who told the following story: One of the ladies who works in their office got a phone call, asking if the company could supply them with some more of the "pixie urinals." Needless to say, the folks in the office were confused, and couldn’t guess what the customer wanted. After thinking it through for a while, they decided the customer was referring to the part in the photo (it’s actually a charger for a handheld/wireless scanning device). At the customer’s company, they have quite a few of these (maybe 10) lined up on a shelf. I can’t disagree that they would indeed look like the urinals for people (pixies?) who would use a very small men’s room.
Here’s a photo of the "pixie urinal" being used as originally intended:
And so now, Will, I have blogged about the pixie urinals, as requested.
What a relief.
