In Rob’s bathroom, I measured his toilet to fit him exactly. What I did not factor in was toilet seat padding. After using a wheelchair longer, he lost some of his butt padding, and it can be painful.

Padded toilet seats are not easy to find here, and we also have an odd shaped round “design” toilet. You can get full risers that are padded, but they are too high, like perching on a pedestal.

When I was in the US I found a cheap thin padded toilet seat that looked like it would work on our round toilet. When I checked my bag to fly back I was a few pounds over weight, and thought the easiest thing to take out to carry on-board was the toilet seat, and thought nothing of it. That’s normal, isn’t it?

As I was going through a huge line at security they had a real character of a lady asking people what they had for carry-on’s and telling them what to do with them. When she came to ask me I said “you are probably not going to believe this, but a toilet seat” and opened the bag so she could see. She got a real laugh out of it, and said in all her years she had thought she had seen it all. She also happily pulled it out and waved it around for everyone to see and people started clapping.

There are some situations that there are no graceful exits from, so I just took a bow and said “don’t worry, it’s not been used” as everyone was hooting it up. Thankfully, at least TSA didn’t hassle me about it, and they all just smirked as I went through. I’ve never gone through security that fast in the US!

When I got home, our neighbour Sjef got a real laugh out of it too, as you can see him proudly displaying it as his new beer table. I’m glad at least someone got some use out of it and we all had some good laughs from it, because of course, it did not fit the toilet!