By Arnold Jansen op de Haar

Recently there was a survey in the Netherlands about men’s urinating habits. It mainly covered behaviour at home. The results revealed that 56% peed standing up and 43% preferred to sit down. I was immediately curious about the missing 1%. Do they do it tied up, hanging upside down from the ceiling?

Always amusing, those surveys with a missing 1%. More of a concern are the 15% of families that make arrangements about peeing habits. Apparently some women, my girlfriend for example, think men peeing standing up is a form of ‘undesirable prehistoric behaviour’. It was one of those things that were a bone of contention from the start. I mean, especially when something is being forced upon someone else.

Undesirable prehistoric behaviour? And yet we all go to see Fifty Shades of Grey. That’s acceptable. I think it’s one or the other. This film is not so different from hitting a woman on the head with a cudgel and dragging her into the cave. There are women who like this, except when it’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn. DSK is, of course, a moron, but in both cases it’s forcing the matter, to put it bluntly. Well, one is with consent and the other without, but it’s a thin line.

Back to peeing. In the past, at home, we just agreed on one thing: keep the toilet neat and tidy. It’s simply a case of wiping up your own spray. The issue isn’t whether you stand up or sit down, but about what you leave behind. Even sitting down you can mess up a toilet.

My mother’s instruction when doing a number two (I was actually allowed to pee standing up) in a public toilet was to cover the toilet seat with toilet paper against the germs, and if there wasn’t any toilet paper she provided paper tissues and the command: ‘Hang over it’.

When touring in the motor car over longish distances, there were always wet face towels in plastic bags, to disinfect our hands afterwards, because towels in public toilets were obviously full of germs. ‘And doorknobs are dirtiest.’

What’s so striking in the Netherlands is that urinals are often too high. For me, in any case. I may well be a member of the tallest nation in the world, but I bring down the average. On tiptoe at such a high urinal, it dangles uncomfortably. And these old-fashioned urinals in the floor, where everything splashes over your shoes, are unhygienic.

In Sweden, they apparently have a political party which wants to make peeing sitting down compulsory. I think it’s a problem if the state goes this far with interfering into your personal life. Similarly, I hate nasty pictures of horrible diseases on cigarette packets, and maybe, in future, also on products that contain sugar, ‘to combat obesity’. Sometimes you feel nostalgic for a portly, cigar-smoking Churchill – even more so given the international political situation.

Because I’ve been thinking about Ukraine. And that we will have to send in our boys. After all, Putin already knows that 43% pee sitting down. And that, over there, they will have a toilet shortage. It’s worrying. Peeing sitting down is a bit like Fifty Shades of Grey without a penis. The Netherlands no longer has any tanks, either. ‘Oh dear, there goes the peeing sitting down army without any tanks!’

Did you watch Hollande and Merkel in Ukraine this week? I’m not sure about Merkel, but I think Hollande looks like someone who pees sitting down.

It’s about time we start acting like men. Putin, of course, pees standing up. Maybe he had to sit down in his youth, and he’s compensating for it now. Besides, he has really pissed on it: a peeing Neanderthal. And now, I just have to explain this column to my girlfriend.

© Arnold Jansen op de Haar
© Translation Holland Park Press