Anxiety in the Mathroom

An email went out at the office recently, addressed to all staff members, with the subject line “Gentlemen need not reply?” The email said:

Found in the ladies room -1 - calculator

Curious? Me too. Did you know that some 17 million people are troubled by a shy bladder? These unfortunate among us are afflicted with a psychological anxiety disorder, called 'paruresis,' that prevents them from urinating in the presence of other people. Everyday trips to the work restroom are a nightmare, supervised drug tests are impossible, and don't even get me started on what this must do to prison life. It's a terribly serious disorder and the marketplace has responded in kind, with books, an international support association, and a Seinfeld episode in which George can't go because his girlfriend's bed is too close to the bathroom. It's like, right there. There's no buffer zone.

A little digging reveals that there is help for the afflicted – full circle to the calculator in the ladies room. It seems that one successful method of overcoming mild paruresis is to solve simple math problems in your head, as a distraction.

(104 x 2)/4 = pee

Or 52.

If you're using a calculator however, I imagine you need to step it up a notch.

(784/8) x 9 = pee

Or 882.

Trouble ahead if you happen to be a paruretic genius. In that case, a simple calculus word problem might be called for:

Emanuel was playing jump rope with his little sister Mary Lou. At one point, the two ropes they were playing with came together to look like the graph pictured below. While Emanuel mindlessly swung the rope, he decided to figure out the area between the curves made by the two jump ropes at that point. What is the total area represented by the graph of f(x) and g(x) if f(x)= sin(2x)+5, g(x)= -cos x+.5)+4, and the first region is bounded by the y-axis?

The answer, of course, is pee. Or 3.854219902 if you're splitting hairs.