La Decoración

Out to dinner with friends at a venerable Mexican Ft Lauderdale institution. Need el baño. Push open the door and confront this mysterious device.

Unless you’re blessed with a schlong the length of a gas pump hose, it’s mounted too high up on the wall to be a urinal. I wave my hands in front of it to activate it —  maybe a paper towel will appear? – but aside from cracking my wrist, nothing happens. And it appears to have a lock – what’s simultaneously so worthless that’s it’s mounted next to a public toilet, yet valuable enough that it has to be locked?

Its coloring suggests a mailbox (short on the red, though), but clearly that slot is too small for a letter or even a postcard. Not that those exist outside of historical novels. And it’s not a parking meter – if they wanted to affix one of those to discourage loitering, they’d put it back in the stall with the sit-down toilet, wouldn’t they?

Without my reading glasses, I can’t make out the print below the word STOP on its northwest front, but that is enough warning to keep me from monkeying around with it. After all, it looks vaguely electrical. But I cautiously lift the removable black plastic part off its cradle – it’s attached by that primitive looking metal cable which resembles bad fencing – and see it bears  patterns of perforations on both extreme ends. Maybe it squirts water? A latrine cleaning device?

I gotta figure it’s some high-tech device that only pre-teen nerds and geeks understand, but why it’s in the bathroom with the urinal mints and condom dispenser is beyond me. I drain the dragon, wash my paws, and return to the beer pitcher.