Potty Break

It used to be that when one needed to pay an, um, extended visit to the restroom, one might bring along some reading material. In fact, in a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, Marshall visited his old apartment to "read a magazine" because he wasn't comfortable doing so at work.

But these days, of course, we have many more options available to us. Recently, on a couple of visits to the restroom at work I have detected the telltale sound (click-click-click...click-click...click-click...click-click-click) of texting coming from inside the stall. Now, I've come to appreciate the value of text messaging in certain situations, but that is not what I would consider one of those.

Then just this morning, I detected a different but equally unmistakable sound, the scritchety one that the little pebble-trackball thing on a BlackBerry makes when you scroll it. So someone was surfing, or emailing, or doing some other BlackBerryish thing while on the throne. That's swell, I guess. Personally, I don't like to even bring my phone into the restroom, mainly because I'm afraid of dropping it into the bowl.