With all the sadness going around, maybe this silliness will conjur some chuckles.

I have a roommate who's a bit older than me. He's in his 60's and in an age demographic outside of my own. The sewer plumbing serving his bathroom has gone awry. He has to use my bathroom now and has recently come to me with a complaint that the toilet lid, not seat, but lid needs to be put down. His justification behind this is that the lid being up allows more bacteria to escape the toilet and it infiltrates the rest of the bathroom.

Am I the only one who thinks this is bizzare? How does this gigantic stiff flap without any seals keep bacteria in the toilet? I don't get it. In always assumed the lid was a means to keep things from falling INTO the toilet, not to keep bacteria from ESCAPING it. Personally, I don't see how it would do that at all. Microscopic fecal bacteria will infiltrate the bathroom lid or no lid... Mythbusters even got fecal bacteria on a toothbrush that wasn't even in the bathroom.

Typically I would pay a request like this no mind, but along with being a roommate henis also my landlord so there is some motivation there to not tick this guy off so I actually am entertain the notion of putting the lid down. But I do want to hear a shared opinion that the toilet lid keeping bacteria from escaping the toilet is silly and/or irrational.

Plus, I have a colostomy bag and don't sit to shit....so I never even touch the lid OR the seat... This will be difficult to incorporate into my routine. As well as one more surface in the bathroom I'm going to have to touch that I'd rather not...especially after his narrow ass done been all over it.

I understood the lid closed limits the bateria spread during flushing since little partcles of water do splash up. I like the lid to stay closed for aesthetics, it looks neater and the whole at least nothing can fall into the bowl thing. But whether germs flow out just randomly thru the day I don't know.

DiscoBallz said:

He may be referring to putting the lid down prior to flushing, which does contain some of the "blast" when a flush happens.

I read an article on a health website which stated that if you don´t put the lid down while flushing all the fecal bacteria will be sprayed all over the bathroom and you also involuntarily inhale it if you don´t put the lid down.

Sounds gross....but that ´s what it said.

BobGeorge909 said:

. Plus, I have a colostomy bag and don't sit to shit....so I never even touch the lid OR the seat... This will be difficult to incorporate into my routine. As well as one more surface in the bathroom I'm going to have to touch that I'd rather not...especially after his narrow ass done been all over it.

Wow, sounds very unpleasant and painful.

Wishing you a speedy recovery. What did your doctor say? How long will you have to be carrying that?