Roots in the Restroom: The Lineage of Stall Walls

As much as I don't connect with the banally juvenile need to inscribe etchings and declarations on the walls of bathroom stalls...

I read them. 

And occasionally take pictures.

It's a guilty pleasure.  Like reading the tabloid headlines while waiting in the supermarket checkout line. 

Scratchings on a bathroom stall, graffiti on a rock…it seems so adolescent and classless.  Initials carved in a tree are sweet, but not much better.  It's apparent the need to mark things is ubiquitous the world over.  No matter where you go, someone with a marker or can of spray paint  "was here."  

When I was in junior high I played percussion in the school band.  Toward the end of my junior high career we received new heads for the timpani drums (the vibrating skin that stretches across the top).  Using our drumsticks, we discovered we could leave an imprint on the fresh surface, much like utensils or fingernails on leftovers in a styrofoam box (anyone who has ever had roommates knows what I'm talking about).  To leave our legacy, the graduating class all carved our initials into the new timpani heads. 

Our band teacher was not happy when he found out.  He fined us all for the graffiti.  We were in our final semester of junior high; students were not allowed to graduate unless all fines were paid.

He fined each of us $40.  Costs for brand new timpani heads start at $40!  He wasn't charging us collectively, he was charging each one of us for the cost of a new timpani head.  The rest of the percussion ensemble cowered and paid the fine.  I was not as easily subdued. 

My band teacher was prone to frustration that escalated.  My mother, band teacher, and I sat across the desk from the principal.  We ended up in the principal's office after he and I twice discussed the matter in his office privately.  

I hadn't wanted to involve my mother.  I'd never been in trouble before!  I didn't want her to know what I'd done.  I thought I was going to get plenty of heat from her about it.  Yet, in the office she sat, and strangely enough, she was on my side.

The band teacher argued that any marking on the timpani not only altered the look, but the sound.  It didn't matter if the other band boys made at etching as well.  Had I been the only one, the timpani would still need replacing.  Therefore, he was charging each boy individually for the cost of a new timpani head.

I rebutted.  Our previous timpani heads had been 15 years old.  They were filled with marks, dings, dents, and plenty of similar inscriptions from past students.  Yet, the sound they made was so unchanged we continued to use them in every concert.  Likewise, the sound of the new timpani clearly had not been degraded as he claimed since we'd been playing the timpani in class for several weeks and it was only when he saw the initials he knew they were there.  

I owned up to responsibility and amends for my actions.  Haggling like I was at a flea market in a foreign port, I offered him $2.50 for the square inch of plastic my initials scarred.  He scoffed at my incredulity.  

It was at this point the principal piped in with words like vandalism and juvenile court.  My mom seemed unfazed, inconvenienced as if the words were a few crumbs she had to brush off her blouse.  I was stunned!  

Looking back now, I understand why: a school prosecuting a minor on the honor roll for inoffensive vandalism of property that remained fully functional, and for which the student offered to pay partial restitution...  Juvenile court would have laughed at them.  At the time, however, his hefty words bore down on my 14-year-old conscience of life and future.  They frightened me.  One place I did not want to leave my mark was on a criminal record.  I knew what I had done was technically vandalism.  They had a case.  The mention of those two words--vandalism and court--broke me.  I took the $40 plea bargain.

My mom covered the cost, if only to put the whole thing to rest.  A legal battle was of no concern to her, but $40 also wasn't worth jeopardizing my upcoming graduation. 

Why did I do it in the first place?  What is this overwhelming need humans have--this deep-seeded desire to let a complete stranger with whom we share no connection know at one point our existence lead us past this place--that it becomes universally necessary to vandalize rather than purchase a postcard?  I used to think this was odd.  Then I realized people have been peeing all over history since it began.  

America was named after Amerigo Vespucci and/or Richard Ameryk.  He found a continent and made sure everyone knew "Amerigo was here."  Ceasar Chavez earned himself a long stretch of street in California.  Reverend Henry Smith settled Smithfield, Maine.  Gustave Eiffel erected the famous tower of the same name.  Lou Gehrig put his stamp on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  A Yurchenko is the most popular vault performed in gymnastics (and is done while wearing a leotard named after its inventor, Jules Léotard).  Natalia Yurchenko coined the term when she became the first person to perform the vault in the early 80s.  

People, places, things, events, inventions, accomplishments, findings, creations…history is nothing if not a percolated list of people placing their marks: I discovered this; I made this; I made this famous; I am why you know this; I was the first; I was the best; I was here.

Now, I'm not saying that "John took a big one" is a declaration that will make it in the history books.  I think we expect such things to go unrecognized when we write them.  Yet, we write them anyway.  Why?

Objects in motion stay in motion; objects at rest stay at rest.  It defies the laws of inertia for an object to make the effort to write an inscription while resting on a toilet or sitting at a bar unless there is an outside force at work.  The force could be boredom, but shouldn't boredom fall under the same auspices?  A mind at rest should want to stay at rest?  

This leads me to believe the behavior stems from the same biology as reproduction and involves mastery, staking a claim, leaving a legacy.  Almost on an imperceptible, unconscious level nature is working to make sure we live on; that our legacy carries forward.  These wall inscriptions, then, become social sex.  We bees are dusting surfaces of the earth with pollinated platitudes to propagate survival of our species.

Knowing the stall walls are covered in social seed makes restroom sanitation even less savory.  But, there is some truth in that, isn't there?  Like dandelion seeds we float around this globe dropping our presence here and there, hoping someone will notice, archeologists will one day unearth the fossils of Hard Rock Cafe's walls and "Joan's an ANIMAL!!!--Vegas Bachelorette Party 2009" will make its way into history.  Even if the archeologist happens to be us returning to the same place 20 years later, we keep the glimmer of nostalgic hope it will mean something to someone someday.

As comatose as these engravings may seem, we must expect SOME response (personal or social) to come from them.  Otherwise, we would never make them--or even think to make them--in the first place!  Whether it's to shock the world with caveman scratchings of anatomy, or a moment of rebellious pleasure to prove "stick-in-the-mud" does not apply as much as everyone assumes it does, a confessional when even the nearest cathedral is still too far away, or just to let the universe know you were here; you existed, there is tremendous propulsion in the human race (even on an unconscious level) to make an impact.  To feel like your existence was not bupkis. 

I daresay it is vital and necessary to continuing life.  If our presence feels undetectable I gather we would not persist our presence very long.  What's the point?  If objects in motion stay in motion, those at rest stay at rest, then those undetectable will remain undetected. 

If the cruciality is that important to our livelihood…then who can blame these scriptors of screens, these poets of panels, these vandals who jot on joints?  Write on, Hoodlums!!

But, please be responsible and use protection.  Abstinence is best, but when one cannot abstain, greenhouse those dandelion seeds.  Prophylactic those professions to social media.  Look at me!  I'm doing it right now!  My lesson was learned.  My record's been clean since my one underage band offense.  I've become one of the foremost fornicators of word propriety there is!

Post an image on Facebook's wall rather than scratching one into China's.  Write about the end of the world on a blog instead of street corner.  Leave "For A Good Time" ads off the tile and on Craigslist.  Same impact; less clean up.

Niko wasn't just here, he IS here--2013