APRIL 11, 2012
The task at hand (in hand)
I have hovered over and sashayed up to many a urinal over the years. Used to clean them when I was a teenager working at Mohawk Trailer Park in New Brunswick. “David,” the owner admonished, “by cleaning these every day you will appreciate the work required to keep them clean and you will not end up being one of these guys who doesn’t care if he hits or misses in here.” I would like to say he was right and so I will, given that I am the sole contributor to this column and I can write what I want and nobody will ever check.
Now sometimes a urinal is just a pretty piece of perched porcelain pottery, at other times it’s an art gallery where piddling Picassos attempt to demonstrate their skills, some with surprising accuracy in their anatomical if not political correctness. But it is the poets I enjoy the most. Pearls of wisdom left to distract us from the task at hand (in hand.)
“We aim to please so you aim too, please.”
“In case of nuclear attack hide in here. Apparently it hasn’t been hit
yet.”
“For a good time, call Rolex.”
But now, companies looking for an advertising edge have waddled into the widdle world and are advertising their wares directly into the eye line of innocent men. In place of that lovely deodorizing patty that sits in the urinal, (the one we used to call the principle’s breath mint) are actual ads, like the one I saw recently in a urinal at a hockey rink in Ft. Myers, Florida.
“YOU’RE MISSING THE ACTION” read the ad, followed by “(if you’ve been here twice during the game. Call Florida Urology at...)”
I was so impressed by this entrepreneurial signage that I took a picture of that ad, but “absolutely nothing or nobody else”, as I explained to the security officer.
So why do men miss a urinal that is directly in front of them and as wide as a 12 man hot tub, which apparently they never seem to miss. And why would they have to visit a urinal twice during a hockey game.
Well the answer to all of these is one word....prostate.
As we age, our hair and bones get thinner, our arteries and waistlines get thicker, some things shrink, some things enlarge, some things have to be replaced and some things just fall off altogether.
Prostates get larger as we get older. They get grumpy, swell up and strangle the outlet from our bladder. What once was a lovely wide conduit for performing calligraphy as we wrote our names in the snow, (show-offs included their middle name and dotted the “i”s.) is no longer. The AK47 is now a toy squirt gun, literally. The prostate has narrowed the passageway to the point that the stream is slow, weak, unreliable and has to be used more frequently i.e., in what once was the still of the night.
There are several procedures and medication treatment options that can help alleviate these lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). We once had high hopes for saw palmetto, but that petered out. But one that works surprisingly well is the ED (erectile dysfunction) drug, Cialis! Turns out Cialis also tunes in to the prostate and turns on the tap properly. No more LUTS for your urinary clutz. Can start hitting urinals again. Furthermore, taken in a tiny daily dose, Cialis is a remarkable little multi-tasker, with very few if any side effects. Cialis treats ED, alleviates LUTS, lowers blood pressure, helps Raynaud’s disease and possibly even helps jet lag. All via its positive effect on our arterial nitric oxide (NO), a gaseous wee molecule that relaxes arteries allowing all of these good things to happen. We are discovering that this natural relaxant is actually quite vital to our good vascular health.
So just say NO to missing the urinal, start writing in the snow like the young, immature man that is still deep within you and stop getting up during the night.
Learn more and meet Dr. Dave or contact him at www.wisequacks.org.
