Our Favorite Reading Chair

Why do we read in the bathroom anyway?

I had to think long and hard about this one. Just like the times I do spend on the toilet.

But really, why do we do this? We, the people who are fortunate enough to live in places where there is the luxury of flushable, semi-comfortable toilets. The bathroom has become our study and the toilet our favorite reading chair. Gone are the days when we would sit in the park or in a rocking chair, cozying up with a book. The W.C. is the new reading room.

I tend to only bring reading material into the bathroom — whether it is a book or magazine or some blog article on my phone — when I’m going Number 2 at home. This is partially due to the fact that when I’m in a public restroom, I know there are other people who “just gotta go” and I have to get in the stall, do my business, and bolt straight back out. There’s really nothing worse than holding up a line in the women’s room. It’s almost shameful to take too long. But the main reason that I keep the reading to my at home loo is something my friend refers to as “The Home Toilet Syndrome.” Yes, it is indeed harder to take a dump anywhere that is not in the comfort of my very own bathroom.

Perhaps I just have a strange sort of attachment to my home bathroom due to childhood memories. When I was first able to read fluidly enough, my family lived in a fairly nice apartment. The bathroom there, in all of its newly-renovated and color-tiled glory, was an Eden of sorts. Why? Because the door locked. It kept my little brother out and away from me, so even when I was done using the toilet, I’d still sit there and read whatever picture book I had with me. Then there was a bathroom change (and by that I mean we moved to another apartment), I grew out of picture books and into ones with chapters, another bathroom change, I started reading (stupid) magazines, and another bathroom change yet again, which leads us to my current situation: reading in the bathroom on multiple mediums on one sitting.

I have never thought of my behavior deeply enough until today. My reading in the bathroom simply “made sense” to me. I know many other people follow the same practice, perhaps never thinking about it like myself. Why do we do this? The bathroom ain’t no rose garden and it doesn’t really smell like one either. So how come we choose the stinky rut as a place to dine on literature?

The average human will spend 92 days on the toilet in their lifetime. That is merely three months in our several dozen years of life. Comparatively, the same average human will spend 25 years asleep, 10.3 years working on the job, and 9.1 years watching television. When we aren’t on the loo, we are always doing something or preoccupied with doing something. We are constantly in action. We have to make dinner, we have to type the thesis, we have to convince the boss, we have to drive the kids to school, we have to go to Saturday brunch, we have to study for an exam.

No wonder we take our time when taking a dump.

When we sit on the toilet, we enjoy moments of being stationary. It is a haven, not just because the door can lock, but because we can breathe. And I’m not talking about inhaling feces-fumes here. We can think without being required to think of something. Sitting on the toilet is an intimate experience with ourselves and our very own thoughts and oftentimes, we choose to share that moment with something that positively stimulates our minds. We choose to share it with literature.

In a way, it’s kind of gross. We’re smelling our own fecal matter while reading something that someone probably tore out their hair writing. In a way, it’s a little disgraceful and distasteful and disrespectful (especially toward the author). In another way, it’s pretty amazing how we can ignore that smell or the fact that we are naked on the bottom half and read. In another way, it shows how desperately we need time to ourselves: time to not work and find a release (no pun intended,) by reading in our most comically vulnerable state.

So why do we read on the toilet? It could be that you’re simply bored and cannot tolerate having nothing to do. It could be that you feel really comfortable sitting in bottomless seat. I always thought it was nice to have a book or a newspaper, just in case no one was home and I ran out of toilet paper. But does the answer really matter at all when we get to stimulate our bowels and our brains in one sitting?

The answer to that one is no. And I hope you’re reading this as you’re sitting on your own toilet, going Number 2.