This Really Blows

I like to think I am an easygoing guy. I try not to get too excited about things in advance. I maintain a level head and a moderate level of excitement unless something is truly extraordinary.

And every once in a while I come across something that turns me into a fanatical evangelist who can’t shut up. I feel the need to tell every single person about it. People I know, people I don’t know, and anybody who happens to be having a conversation. It’s like a cake that I can’t eat enough of.

But several years ago I found something in a public restroom that changed my life. It made me so crazy excited that I didn’t know what to do with myself. And every time I see it, even if I’m in the crappiest of moods. It lifts my spirits.

Now normally a trip to a public restroom is an awful experience. I’ve heard from women that their bathrooms are disgusting but I still have to believe that men’s rooms are even worse.

And of those bathrooms, it seems like the ones at New York area airports are the worst. They smell like a depressed vacuum of souls, wrapped up in a hollow resonance of gross.

And they are barely hanging together. The products in these restrooms are never of the finest quality. The paper products and soap are industrial and for the barest minimum of functionality.

Specifically, I have never pulled off some toilet paper and thought to myself:

Wow this is going to be a wonderful experience!

No. It’s usually something more like:

Ya know what? I could use this to sand down those shelves in my apartment!

And that usually happens right when I walk into the bathroom because I have to take off a batch of toilet paper to wipe the pee off the seat.

There are no happy surprises in a public restroom. A happy surprise usually ends up meaning soap in the dispenser. I went to a movie theater in South Carolina that had 7 sinks and 6 of them…. SIX were out of order. I mean if you can’t even keep your sinks working I think its time you get your money back from the contractor, plumber, or monkey who built your bathroom.

But there is 1 surprise that exists in public restrooms. It is a device, no, a machine that does things that no other machine can do. It turns air into magic, and turns wet hands into dry ones.

I am speaking of course about the Xlerator hand dryer.

Now maybe you are one of the unfortunate few who have never laid eye on, or hands under, an Xlerator hand dryer. You might be sitting there thinking

It’s a hand dryer, what’s the big whoop?

Well I’ll tell you what the big whoop is! It kicks to life like a jet engine and blows the water, ALL the water, off your hands in less than 12 seconds! It's like a wall mounted leaf blower... for your hands.

This hand dryer is from the future. It is science fiction. It is a contraption of Orwellian significance. It is like getting the Internet in 1907 or finding skittles in a sarcophagus. It is so far ahead of the rest of the pack of hand dryers out there that is almost not fair. It makes those other hand dryers look like assholes.

And speaking of the other hand dryers, let’s break down the categories.

First you have the push button hand dryers, which are the worst in the world because that means that I have to use my hand, the hand I just washed with soap (if there was any) to push that button that was pushed by somebody before me who didn’t wash their hands. So now I have an extra germ on my hand.

Which is why I use my elbow to push that button, or my shoulder… or my foot. Yes I know that defeats my point but I wouldn’t have to use my foot if there wasn’t a button now would I?

And that’s fine if it’s at normal height, but if its lower, then I look like an extremely special individual with no idea how to work the machine. It’s a lot like my elevator experience.

And then there are the automatic sensor hand dryers, which I don’t have to touch, thank god. But they are so weak and pathetic I feel the need to put my hand on its shoulder and tell it:

Hey buddy, it’s going to be OK.

Its not even like it’s drying anything, it just feels more like I’m putting my hands in front of the face of a feverish mouth breather. So then I end up shaking my hands for 3 minutes after like I’m doing the neutron dance.

And I hate doing the neutron dance in the bathroom.

If I am just going to end up shaking my hands that much anyway I shouldn’t even bother washing them. I should just wipe them on my pants straight off like I did when I was 11. And even though I am in my late 20s I still find myself doing that more than I should.

And finally there are those hand dryers that don’t even make sense. It looks like a hand dryer but there is no discernable button, and running your hands under it does not make anything happen. It might not even be a hand dryer. It could just be a fuse box, or a time machine, or something.

That is why I am so grateful for the Xlerator hand dryer. It doesn’t just blow the water off my hands, it blows my worries away. And that is something I could not be more grateful for. One day I hope to be wealthy enough to install one in my home. I could think of no better status symbol.

I mean really the only thing that could make the Xlerator hand dryer even better would be is if they put one in the stall so I could blow the pee off the seat.

But let’s take this one step at a time. I can wait for that development.