Squatters.
First Contact.
Location: Normandy

Squatter-toilets - for those who have somehow managed to remain ignorant thus far - were designed by someone who enjoyed shitty heels. They resemble a shower-tray with two foot-platforms. The platforms allow you to evade the inevitable flow of shit and piss, while offering a shockingly small variety of stance-options: the favoured being the knee-trembling crouch of the struggling weight-lifter...

Being small kids, (10/12) my brother and I were still supple and amused by this concept until a series of accidents prevailed.

This is just the first...

The first night of our budget "travel the length of France in a Ford Escort holiday" was spent in coastal Normandy. We fed on shrimps that we had netted in the sea. Half way though the next day's journeying, we desperately required a shit-stop. Hmm. Squatters. We'd been informed about them, but so far hadn't set foot (or hand) in one.

Carefully placing trollies and shorts around our knees (the highest placement available when "assuming the position") we squatted while giggling in adjacent cubicles.
Laughing is not conducive to accurate sphincter control.
Good sphincter control is recommended if you're dancing the sour-apple quick-step.
Listening to your sibling's building laughter get accompanied by louder and louder splattering noises causes *yet more* laughter... and resultant shit-torrents.

The more we laughed, the worse our anal control. The worse our anal control, the more we laughed. 2 minutes later we were howling with laughter desperately trying to maintain balance on the raised areas: I would later realise that this was the first of my disasterous shit-induced positive feedback loops.

Mirth and merriment were short-lived as - bawling like a mong and trying to hoik his trollies up - My brother literally skidded in shit and lost footing. The *THUD* represented the moment that both of his feet hit at waist height on opposite cubicle sides as he fell flat on his back in a pile of bog-roll and Shrimp-splatter, and was also the moment where *facepalm* I jumped.

Being caused to jump while laughing and trying to wipe one's arse and heels (I have a blast radius that makes Hiroshima and Nagasaki look lame) had the obvious and highly predictable effect of making me fall over. I instinctively put a hand out behind me to stop the fall.. it went straight down the large diameter shit-hole in the back of the pan. If I'd have known about break-dancing back then, I'd have been proud of my momentary pose. Before the thought "oooh squishy" had even formed in my mind, my feet then kicked out from under me as the coefficient of friction failed to be big enough, and I too - in accordance with a theme that would establish itself in my life - became a walking shit-monster.

**************

Looking back, Maybe this was the point at which my father became de-sensitized to shit-covered children.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Tue 26 Jan 2010, 14:44, 3 replies)

I'd forgotten these
Through years of expensive therapy. Horrible, horrible things.

On a camping trip to France with a mate, he used one for the first time (I think he'd been holding shit in for a couple of days to avoid them).

In he went, and not a minute later I heard a yelp and a crash/splat.

The handles had come away from the walls.
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Tue 26 Jan 2010, 14:56, closed)

I will sue you...
...for making me revisit my previously hidden memories of similar experiences. Have a click anyway, ya git!
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 26 Jan 2010, 17:42, closed)

Team Guy-rope
I had forgotten about those awful thimgs, driven to a distant corner of my mind, I now remember Team Guy Rope at Le Mans 1986 I think, to join you had to use a squatter but keeping your legs straight aided only with a guy rope from your tent and the coat hook on the back of the door, a clean drop was esential
(johnners hitting things with hammers until they work, Tue 26 Jan 2010, 20:59, closed)