Graffito

It's singular for graffiti, in case you didn't know. Graffiti is an interesting topic. I am annoyed by graffiti, except the odd case where it's art, and yet I love to read ancient graffiti because it crystallizes how the common folks felt when the sources otherwise leave them mute.

Maybe I dislike graffiti now since people don't have to spray paint signs to get their point across, they can instead find a computer and use this fancy new invention called the internet.

Or maybe I'm just a hypocrite.

Anyway, I was at a hospital much of this week (hence the late post) and, given the amount of coffee I imbibed, the restroom was a frequent scene for me. This hospital had peculiar locks. They swung the opposite direction of how locks usually swing. I couldn't tell you now what direction locks should swing because it's such an intuitive thing that you never think about it until faced with an oddball lock. Now I know I wasn't the only one who noticed this problem because the first bathroom I used (2nd floor surgical prep) had a black marker notation (including a helpful arrow) scrawled on the wood around the lock. I chuckled and felt vindicated that someone else noticed this irritating reversal of the norm. Later, I was visiting someone in a recovery room (3rd floor) and THAT restroom also had helpful graffiti on the door. This notation, however, was in a different hand and a different color marker. Apparently there's no shortage of markers in hospitals, so administrators should get their locks right if they don't want helpful graffiti all over their bathroom doors.

All of this puts me in mind of college. I stopped once to use the bathroom in Engineering and was pleasantly surprised to find equations and a Tolkien quote scrawled inside the stall, showing that although engineering students had different taste, they were no more mindful of college property.

My favorite college incident, however, was to be found on the 2nd floor of the UCF library. Some joker decided to attack fraternities with his pen, instigating a graffiti-war between Greeks and non-Greeks (seriously, we should call the latter 'Trojans').

I've never quite understood the need to divide and subdivide into tribes and clans, but I read with fascination as these two groups rattled their spears at each other with vulgarity and witticism. The conversation was so delicious that I went to the next stall and read it's interior as well. The vicious battle had, to my delight, spilled over into this stall as well, though there was a significant neutral addition: a helpful chart someone created giving people the opportunity to rate their bathroom experience. Later writers added categories to the chart when they felt their particular type of bowel movement wasn't represented.

I guess some contemporary graffiti has delighted me as much as ancient, so it's fair to say that I'm not as anti-graffiti as I thought. Graffiti tends to be either troublesome and distracting or interesting and witty, in other words, it's art.