Stream of consciousness. Or something.

So, last night, I'm waiting at JFK to pick up some people, and since traffic on the ride down had been heavier than expected and I'd had little else to do besides drink coffee, I headed for the men's room.

"Hmm, that's odd," I thought. "Seems a bit late in the year for a bug to be hanging out in the urinal." But there it was.

Sometimes I overthink these things, so just as I often break stride to avoid stepping on ants, I directed my stream below the bug. But then I couldn't resist seeing if I could, you know, make it move, so I started inching the stream upward to just below it. The bug didn't move. I finished recycling my coffee and stepped away from the urinal. Automatic flush kicked in. "Oh, no! I am guilty of negligent homicide insecticide entomolocide whatever!"

But then even with water pouring down the back wall, the bug refused to budge. "Must already be dead," I thought. "But boy, it's really stuck on there."

And then, walking towards the sinks, I noticed a bug in the next urinal. And the next. And the next. And then the light bulb finally came on. A story I'd heard somewhere bubbled up, and I remembered thinking when I'd heard it, "What a smart idea."

Oh, yeah. We of the stand-up-to-pee persuasion like nothing finer than having something to aim at. But I wonder if the designers ever thought about people who feel that ridiculous guilt about killing bugs? Or, who knows, maybe that made me aim even more carefully.

And yes, it was Terminal Four.

(Pic source, obvs.)