That Thing from the Past #1: The Michael Jackson Urinal

There's not a lot I remember about Grade One.

I had velcro shoelaces, the Super Mario Bros. movie caused quite a bit of playground excitement, and the unwritten rules of the schoolyard were written with those big ass blue pencils.

There is one thing I remember though: you never use the last urinal on the right-hand side.

Did it leak? Was it haunted? Did the last kid who use it mysteriously vanish? Not exactly.

As the legend goes, Michael Jackson lived in the urinal. If you used it, sometimes he would come out and touch your penis. Some referred to it as a grab, others a light tickle.

Thinking back about this now, the entire bathroom superstition blows my mind. We were just kids. We could barely understand what alleged molestation was, and probably never even heard 'Beat It' before. Jackson wasn't a real entitle, but a spirit like Bloody Mary or those deer we saw having sex on the soccer field.

How did it work anyway? Did all of Michael come out, or just the hand? What happens to a rhinestone glove when it gets wet? What the hell were we picturing as Michael Jackson anyway?

Oh wait, when did 'Free Willy' come out? He sang a song for that didn't he? Well, why were we telling stories about the guy from 'Free Willy' grabbing our wee-wees in the bathroom? I'm surprised Michael Madsen wasn't brought in for questioning.

I guess it goes to show that kids pick up on a lot of things, even though parents try to shield them from child molestation trials. Unless the opposite is true, and our parents showed us the 'Thriller' album cover telling us to beg for an adult if we ever saw the strange man.

Speaking of stranger danger, does anyone remember those warnings about a suspicious man in a blue van? I know it was a local thing, but I have a feeling there was more than one weirdo in a blue van offering to reveal the Caramilk secret for a taste of his lollipop.

In closing, there have been no reported incidents in the boy's bathroom since the mid 1990s, and the urinal remains open despite community protest. The school board refuses to comment on the rumors, although administrators unofficially suggest exercising caution when approaching the site.

I suppose that means I'll be taking my bare-assed peeing with my pants around my ankles elsewhere.