October, though nearly over, is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It also happens to be National Gay & Lesbian History Month, Talk About Prescriptions Month, Celebrate Sun Dried Tomatoes Month, and Toilet Tank Repair Month. (At my house, it’s always Toilet Tank Repair Month.)

In fact, there are dozens of other noble (cough) causes of which you are supposed to be aware, right now: List. How does anyone sleep at night?

In the same spirit, I have a couple of additional causes you should be aware of, during November.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve entered the bathroom stall at work and found the seat of the toilet covered in coffee-laced urine. Now I’m not talking about some nasty, cracked, U-shaped piece of whitewashed plywood that’s connected by a rusty nail to a toilet bowl located in a shed behind a Kum ‘N’ Go in eastern Arizona. I’m talking about a toilet seat in an otherwise-immaculate corporate bathroom.

I don’t get it. It’s got !@$%! hinges for crying out loud. How hard is it for you to grab a piece of toilet paper and lift the seat? And if you do pee all over the seat, can’t you take a wad of toilet paper and wipe it up?

You know what? I don’t care how nice you are, or whether you adopt stray puppies by the dumpster-full. If you leave a mess on the toilet seat for next poor bastard to clean up or sit on, you are an evil person. You’re the sort of person who, if you were a corporate CEO, would dump toxic waste in a river. If you were the leader of a country, you’d invade Poland.

Therefore, I hereby declare November to be … drum roll, please … Don’t Leave Your Bodily Fluids On The Damn Toilet Seat Awareness Month. I’ve even designed a rubber bracelet for everyone to wear. It symbolizes how, if we band together, we can overcome. I hope you’ll choose to wear one. If I sell enough of them, I’ll buy a porta-potty for my cubicle.

But wait! There’s more!

I’m not a morning person. Somehow, Monday through Friday, my brain stem - the part of the brain which scientists say we inherited from our reptilian ancestors - drags my butt out of bed, drives to work, and gets me to the break room. If I get there, and there’s no coffee, it’s going to be a bad, bad day. It means that some selfish twit took the last few drops but thinks that his or her time is far too precious to make the next batch.

Ok. I’ll admit. I’ve done it once or twice. But both times I was being chased by corporate security, and I still grieve for what I was forced to do.

That’s why November is also Refill The Freakin’ Coffee Pot Month. You can show your support for this important cause by placing this ribbon on the back of your car, with pride.

It’s sad that we live in a world with evil. These causes may seem trivial, but they’re not. Remember that how a person behaves with the small things is how he or she will behave with the big things, only more so. Today it’s a dirty toilet seat, or an empty coffee pot. Tomorrow it may be your rivers, your country, even your life.

Thank you. And May God Bless America. I’ll be going, now.

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