Silent Sitters

I am in the bathroom at work. There are two cubicles. One cubicle has the door closed, with the engaged sign in operation and the tips of a pair of black shoes visible under the door. The other cubicle’s door is open and the cubicle is unoccupied. I enter this cubicle, close the door and turn the lock. After a period of five, ten or twenty seconds the absence of noise from the cubicle next door deafens me. The usual symphony of shuffled feet, the unfurling and tearing of toilet paper and the frighteningly vivid sounds of liquid displacement are not emanating from the cubicle. It seems my neighbour is clearly a Silent Sitter or perhaps, more accurately, a Silent S*itter), waiting in the cubicle for me to finish my task so that they may continue their ablutions in seclusion and anonymity once I leave. Instead of continuing their chore they prefer to sit silent and still, with what can only be described as a front row seat for my upcoming performance. This riles me! In the same way that they may not want an audience (albeit an audience of one thoroughly self-focused, goal-oriented porcelain performer who could not care less about their business) I am not keen on the idea of a ghostly Silent Sitter perched on the edge of their Caroma attentively riding every shuffle, unzipping, evacuation, tearing, scrunching (or folding…) water-falling, zipping moment of activity as they wait, in earnest, for me to leave.

I am tempted to knock on the adjoining wall and say “You are not fooling anyone. I know you are in there!!

I am not sure what game these people are playing at. It is not a case of If a man sits in a toilet and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?

Silent Sitters of the world! Let me tell you this - Your silence heralds your existence louder than ever!



"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"