Male toilets, and embarrassing social etiquette.

I went to the cinema to see Inception. Great film; incredible action sequences and an epic story.
But during my trip to the cinema I was involved in an equally epic case of the embarrassing reality of being a human male.

The cinema was busy, and we had arrived late anyway. We queued up to buy our tickets and gawped at the extortionate prices Cine World places on that most expensive of commodities; popcorn.
Time was short, I knew, but it was going to be a long film, and powerful though my bladder is, it was unlikely to last two and a half hours.

I rushed to the toilets, and found myself in a difficult situation. Let me explain.

Cine World's toilets are fairly big, with 8 "adult sized" personal urinals along the wall with 2 "children sized" ones at the end.

Now, unwritten male social etiquette is actually extremely clear in this field. The first man must ALWAYS take the urinal closest to the far wall. The following must be filled with a one-urinal gap in between, allowing for a maximum of 4 "adult sized" urinals to be in use at any one time.

Under no circumstances do you take a urinal in between those in use. It's just not right.
That would indicate you had made a conscious decision to step in between two pissing men.
Not only that, but it would mean you had to CHOOSE two men to step between. That means you've chosen two men over 3 other possible combinations of two men.
That would make you gay.

I'm sure you can imagine what comes next.

I walk into the toilets, and the wholly inconvenient number of four men are using the toilets.

Time was running out. I needed the toilet badly, but I could not risk contravening the etiquette.

Now, do not be to hard on me, I made the following decision in the heat of the moment. I buckled under the pressure.

The "children sized" urinals were free.
I had to take it. It was the easy option.

With a sombre look on my face, I stepped up to the white porcelain rising little higher than my knees. Seconds after I had taken out the top button, and unzipped the fly, the inevitable happened.

All four men who had been using the toilets stopped, virtually simultaneously and shuffled away, leaving me alone, standing at a child's urinal with a full complement of adult urinals available.

What were my options? I considered sidling across to the adult urinal to my left, but it was too late; the fly was down, the tackle was out (as Blackadder puts it).
I couldn't move now, like some urinal hopping lunatic.
It would be fine. I could relieve myself, and leave with my head held high, as long as I was quick.

It got worse.

Now, everyone had left the toilet by now, and so I was standing there, pissing into a child size urinal, alone.

Who could walk in now, but two young boys and, I presume, their father. I can only imagine the look on his face as he saw a fully grown man, standing in an empty toilet, with multiple full-sized urinal options available, using a child's urinal.

Looking back, this whole situation could have been avoided if I had been sensible and just used one of the free cubicles. Silly me.