A great concern for public health is the epidemic of urinary incontinence that has been plaguing us for a while. It cannot be attributed to the endemic lack of public toilets, given that the public toilets disappeared long before the first cases appeared; on the contrary, now with private businesses there are many bathrooms, which are required to be clean, have running water, soap and toilet paper, a requirement that was never present in the bathrooms of the State restaurants. So, this troubling epidemic worries me, but cannot be linked in any way to the lack of sanitary facilities.
At first they were nocturnal cases, anonymous overnight emergencies, only recognizable by ammonia odor in the atmosphere, but the advance of the epidemic has changed the knowledge of the ill. In its etiology it is described a loss of modesty, so that those infected can be detected with the naked eye in public and in broad daylight discharging their urination. Also, it more frequently attacks males under forty years.
Given this proliferation, it’s no longer just the area around the Capitol or the doorways of the Hotel Cohiba’s mall that are affected, now may be an innocent hibiscus in a planting strip, the entrance of a private garage, the side of a bakery.
My mother often repeats a phrase and I surprised myself several times repeating it also: “In my day …” And in my day, readers, people did not so blithely piss in the middle of the street.
30 September 2013
