The Bathroom Cricket

Yesterday, I went to the bathroom. This is something I tend to do on a daily basis--go figure. However, this was no ordinary bathroom experience. Before you start forming your own idea in your mind, I better get to the point of this story quickly.

There was a cricket in the bathroom. Yes, a cricket in the women's bathroom by the large cafeteria. I walked through the bathroom doors (which I think have been painted recently - a nice fuchsia pink colour), searched out a relatively clean stall with a flushed toilet, latched the door, and heard the unmistakable "chirp chirp" of a cricket. Initially, I thought I was hearing things. Classes can make you go a little stir crazy, as can sitting for hours in the library doing readings or studying; so, of course, I thought I was hearing noises or maybe regressing to a childhood mental state which hopefully would not end catatonically (this would be very inconvenient and embarrassing to have happen whilst using the facilities - I'm sure you can imagine why). But no, the noise was definitely real.

My next theory was that someone had an interesting ringtone and was receiving many texts in the stall next to me. I have heard frog ringtones, so I assume there are cricket ones as well. I thought said person must miss summer and was living vicariously through her ringtone. Each time she received a text she was transported away from the -37 weather and back to her favourite summer evening, sitting in a rainforest in the Amazon, surrounded by the soothing chirp of thousands of crickets - or something similar anyway. But no. My stall neighbour left and the noise continued. I then saw the cricket. She (it WAS a women's bathroom) was sitting in the corner of my stall, contently chirping away.

I think the washrooms should have nature CDs playing when we enter. It would make my cricket friend feel more at home during these winter months and create a more soothing atmosphere; a trip to the washroom could feel like a mini vacation!

Eat Nothing, Do Something.

The other day I was waiting for the bus, and I saw the back of someone's tshirt. It said "Eat nothing, do something." I was quite shocked, considering I had seen her come from the gym, and was thinking about the post I was going to make on this blog about the current state of societal body type expectations, the effects of media and photoshop on youth and self-perceptions of body image; I thought of extravagant ways to express my disgust with the fact that a tshirt actually presented that slogan, let alone the irony of it being worn at the gym for a work out; I was going to do outside research, have stats about body images, maybe mention the new TV show "Village on a Diet," and discuss the distortions of body image and types spanning from tiny body frames to the obesity epidemic; there was the potential for specific stats about northern Ontario, a few anecdotes about my own gym experiences, and how much I do, in fact, enjoy going to the gym myself, but feel there are limits and health concerns when taken too far to the extreme. Essentially, there was to be a discussion about individual health and finding balance without going to either extremity of the spectrum.

However, I luckily decided to Google said slogan before my extensive discussion on the topic. What did I find, you may ask? That it is the slogan for World Vision's 12 hour famine, meant to draw attention to world hunger. After all that, all I could think was: "What a fantastic slogan!" I mean, it not only got my attention, but all the emotions and the internal discussion I had with myself basically focused on the choices we make and how both extreme starvation or extreme overeating of unhealthy food are not positive choices. But the whole point of the 12 hour famine is to bring awareness to the fact that those who are starving and impoverished simply do not have that choice at all. End of story. So thank you, random fellow Nipissing student, for grounding my thoughts.