Some people will tell you they know when something is about to happen, or they know by looking at someone what type of a person they are. It's as if they had special powers.
Now while I believe our bodies and minds do have some form of instinct or intuition, I think the ones above are a little bit of the men-in-white-coats kind.
If someone was throwing a punch at me, my body might instinctively try to block it to prevent injury to itself. If my guts were growling and things started to move south, I would instinctively run to the nearest washroom. There are no special powers involved.
Our bodies and minds work in mysterious ways. As I get older, I have started to think a little more about the subject.
You may have heard a friend or co-worker talk about how the hair on their neck was tingling and when they turned around there was someone staring at them. As if the hair on their neck was giving them some kind of warning signal. Each little hair with its own little hairy voice screaming for your attention.
Maybe it is waking up in the morning to see your young son or daughter or even former boyfriend or girlfriend beside the bed staring at you and not saying a word.
Some people will say they knew someone was sitting there staring at them and that is why they woke up. Rubbish.
You woke up because of the smell of milky Cheerios or because the kid decided to pull that stray eyebrow of yours.
But what about other things?
For instance, I can walk to the door of my bedroom in the pitch dark and my hand will instinctively go to the handle. Never misses. No fumbling around. I move my hand and it hits the door handle.
But why is that? Is it because I have an uncanny knack of being able to see in the dark? Probably not. Could it be that the door handle is the size of a soccer ball, so I touch it no matter were my hand is. Maybe, but there is something else to it.
It is called muscle memory. When you do something enough times your muscles remember what to do and it becomes instinctive. Your muscles know how much to move when you have muscle memory.
Now if we extrapolate this to going to the bathroom at night I can better explain my theory a little better.
But first, a side note: while talking about whether people turn the light on when they go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, one staff member said he had a trick that works really well. When you get up to use the washroom put a hand over one eye so it remains in the dark. Turn the light on in the washroom keeping the second eye open. Do your business with one eye covered then when you turn the light off switch the hand to cover the eye that had remained open. Apparently the eye that was covered will still be adjusted to the dark and you will be able to see better and make your way back to the bed without stubbing a single toe.
I have not tried it yet, but it sounds like an immense amount of fun.
Back to my theory. Girls like to have the toilet seat down at all times, guys tend to lift it when doing number one and often forget to put it back down for the lady of the house.
But maybe the ladies have had it right all along, and I'll tell you why.
Let's go back to fumbling in the dark to get to the washroom, but we won't cover any eyes and let's just leave the lights off for now. You make it to the toilet safely and you need to sit down.
So, with your back to the cold porcelain you start to sit, only at a certain point your bum sends a speedy message to your brain that the seat is not down. You stagger a little, maybe your cheeks even slightly kiss the freezing Shanks bowl and you wake out of your stupour in a real hurry.
But how did your bum know that the seat wasn't down without you actually sitting down. How could it decipher the half-inch difference between the seat being there and it being in the upright and locked position. Do you have the cleverest bum in all of Prince George. Does your bum have a sixth sense and an instinct all of its own? Could you therefore be referred to as a smart arse? Maybe.
But your heiny and knees have muscle memory all of their own. The knees know exactly how much to bend before your cheeks hit the seat. There is a certain amount of tension in the knees while reclining onto the can and only when the bum has touched down do the knees release the tension so you can relax.
But from decades of the up and down motion your knees know exactly how much to bend, how much tension to use and exactly when to release. So when the toilet seat is up instead of down and the knees get to that sweet spot and not a single cheek has hit the seat, you get the knee-jerk reaction, which results in your legs straightening to try to stand you up before you fall in to the toilet, and you stagger backwards to catch your balance knocking everything off of the back of the toilet waking the wife at 4 a.m. One arm lands on the back of the toilet, your back is arched, you are off balance and you have to try to push yourself forward with force to return to the standing position.
But you can thank your knees and your butt for their muscle memory and your knee-jerk instinct for saving you from drowning.
