A friend of mine, we’ll call him ‘Ryan’ because that is his real name, was doing blessings at a local hospital. During one of the blessings, his stomach started acting funny, gurgling and splurting and whatnot. He knew he had to get to the bathroom quick, but the guy he was with was known for giving unusually long blessings. Ryan grew more and more worried as his companion spoke in that extra slow, sincere blessing voice. With no end to the blessing in sight, Ryan began shifting weight from side to side, kind of dancing around, trying to relieve some of the pressure building in his abdomen, while at the same time, trying not let the blessee detect his movements.

He was grimacing in pain when he finally heard the blessed word Amen. Without saying a word, he jolted from the room and ran down the hall to the bathroom. He burst through the bathroom door, already unbuckling his pants. It was a large, one room, handicapped style bathroom with a urinal and an extra high toilet against one wall. Ryan scooted into position, and barely sat down before he lost all control. He sat there breathing hard with relief, kind of smiling at what just happened. He was wiping sweat from his brow, when he heard a terrifying sound. Someone was turning the bathroom doorknob.

“Oh no, oh no,” he thought as he realized that in his rush he forgot to lock the door. He couldn’t decide if he should make a quick dash to lock the door or what. He was not in any kind of condition to move around, so he just started saying, “Occupied, occupied.” But the door slowly opened, and an old man who seemed near death entered the room. Ryan immediately realized that the very old man was hard of hearing and had missed his warnings. Ryan hunched over to hide himself, but was more embarrassed because of the lingering bathroom aroma.

The old man walked in, noticed Ryan and stopped. Ryan kind of smiled and said again, “Occupied.” The old man once again seemed to just ignore Ryan, and began walking toward him. Ryan was freaking out at this point wondering what was going on here. He thought maybe the old guy was just lost or something, but then he noticed the old guy was undoing his belt. “Oh my crap, what is going on here,” he thought. Ryan starting getting defensive, “Hey, what are you doing?” The old guy just kept ignoring him.

Then, Ryan realized the old guy was heading for the wall urinal that was right next to the toilet where Ryan was hunched over. “Oh my gosh! This can’t be happening,” Ryan thought as he leaned as far away from the urinal as possible. He tried his best to hurry and finish up his business before the old man could get in position, but it was too late. Ryan could only think to himself, “Don’t look over, don’t look over.” And he didn’t look, but he closed his eyes in horror and nearly gagged as he felt tiny droplets of backsplash gently falling on his arm and face.

That day, Ryan left the bathroom a different man. I like to tell him he was baptized by sprinkling.