Toilet Walls

"Oh hey, you pee too?
Sweet, me too!
Now we have something in common."
~ Author unknown, Parks Library Toilet

Emily Dickinson embraced a sense of loneliness in her poetry that  injects into us deep and powerful emotions through the fragments of beauty she left behind more than a century ago.

But what today's loners, our generation of children of broken homes and broken hearts that carry individualism on our shoulders, express ourselves through is not only drastically different but also rather ludicrous. We make friends on Facebook, make our say on Twitter and bond on toilet walls.

On the door of the same toilet cubicle that had the above rather unpoetic verse, was scribbled an optimistic say about Christmas being around the corner. Someone had cut it out and written "the birth death of Jesus." Below that "Resurrection," someone else had piped in enthusiastically. Perhaps a while later, "Spring Break" was brought up by another toilet user. On this cue, yet another person had expressed their excitement about Beltane. "Yeah, Wicca," someone had said. "Pagan, actually" another person had corrected. And this ramble of opinions and voices had come to a climax when a toilet user asked why you simply cannot accept the existence of other religions? From there on things deviate into a rather philosophical debate on theology, all on the door of a toilet.

I understand that a university is a boiling pot of intellectualism fueled by freedom of expression and youth hormones. But to take philosophy of religion with you to the toilet seems obscene to me. "Do something that will make you orgasm," was a helpful suggestion on the very same door. Now that seemed at least more appropriate, given that this was in the library, (for the lack of euphemism) a place that gets any bibliophile's juices flowing.

In another corner there was a lettering not scribbled, but strongly etched into the door, something that made me smile, and restored my hope in humanity. It simply read "KONY 2012."