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By Mary Kay Jordan Fleming

“Hey, have you been in the restroom yet? They bought new toilets!” I had just arrived at work when I was greeted by the biggest news in years. Before this, the only update to the bathrooms had been new toilet paper rolls the diameter of a beach ball.

My coworker’s teaser about new plumbing was almost as irresistible as the quick-acting diuretic I took 30 minutes ago. “Be right back,” I assured her.

I assumed the position and felt some extra tightening in my quads, or what’s left of them, as I descended. When my knees could compress no further, I lost altitude and plopped down hard. “Whoa,” I shouted to no one in particular, “whose idea was it to mount these things so low?” I would have plotted revenge right then and there but I was too busy trying to hoist myself up.

Minutes later, I returned with a tape measure. Standard toilets are 15 inches off the floor and, for some reason, these new fixtures were wall-mounted a mere 13 inches off the floor. It doesn’t sound like much, but I assure you those last two inches were experienced in one panicky, lurching, humiliating thud. As physicist Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory noted as a heavy box careened down a flight of stairs: “Ah, gravity, thou art a heartless bitch.”

Last year, I told the hubby the only thing I wanted for Christmas was comfort-height toilets for our home. Newer fixtures come in variable heights: some are 17-19 inches off the floor and extra-tall models are 20 inches off the floor. Not so lofty as to be a veritable throne but high enough to minimize knee compression. One website promoted extra-tall toilets saying they would “add pizzazz to your home,” which I think we can all agree lowers the bar for pizzazz.

Added comfort aside, doctors warn higher commodes can “inhibit natural functioning” because elimination is easiest if we squat rather than sit. Enter an enterprising-but-chronically-constipated mother of seven with her family’s invention, the Squatty Potty. It’s a footstool that raises your knees above your hips to mimic squatting.

A headline in Time magazine claimed the use of bathroom stools (no pun intended) “helps you poop better.” Researchers asked 52 medical residents to keep detailed logs (again, no pun intended) of their bowel movements for two weeks. Most participants described easier and faster elimination when they placed their feet up on the device. The study’s co-author noted that gastroenterologists were routinely asked about the Squatty Potty at parties. Really? I love my gastroenterologist but would never assault him in public with chitchat about bowel movements.

SquattyPotty.com touts its device as “The #1 Way to #2” and invites buyers to “join the bowel movement” to “discover how enjoyable pooping can be.” (The ads write themselves.) Personally, I was afraid to click the Shop-Our-Stools button lest the delivery arrive on my porch in a flaming paper bag.

With or without footstools, taller toilets are grabbing a growing share of the plumbing market, for good reason. Short commodes, like sports cars and Adirondack chairs, are a younger person’s game. For those of us with grinding knees, nothing beats taking a morning constitutional astride an elevated throne.

— Mary Kay Jordan Fleming

Mary Kay Jordan Fleming is professor emerita of psychology and an award-winning humor writer (Erma Bombeck 2016, National Society of Newspaper Columnists 2019 and 2020). She has published at Next Tribe, Next Avenue, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Points In Case, Boomer Café and others.