I freely admit it: Sometimes I think about Jonathan Frakes on the toilet. Here’s why.

Lately I’ve been watching an absolute boatload of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m watching it all the time, whether it’s a great episode like “Attached” or “Data’s Day” or a real stinkeroo like “Sub Rosa” or (shudder shudder) “Shades of Gray.” And there’s a wonderful thing that Will Riker does.

There’s lots of wonderful things Will Riker does, of course. He walks around with his forehead stuck way out, like he might have to get into a dominance fight with a bighorn sheep. He sits in his bridge chair with his legs splayed as far apart as is humany possible, as though the awesome power of his mighty genitals simply cannot be contained. He seduces you with little more than a glance and a wry smile. But more awesome than all of this is the way he sometimes sits down.

See, in the Captain’s Ready Room and in Ten Forward, the chairs all have strangely low backs. They’re not comically low, but they’re low enough that someone who is fifteen feet tall like Riker is able to sit in them and get up by simply lifting his enormous leg over the top of the chair and plopping right down. Somebody of normal size couldn’t do it. But somebody like Riker, secure in his unstoppable hugeness, can do it all the time. And he does, with relish.

So I like to imagine that actor Jonathan Frakes does this in real life, because it’s one awesome maneuver. Yet in looking around me, the only chairs I see of comparable size are, well, toilets. The tank is about at the same height as the chairbacks of those little seats on the Enterprise-D. Sadly, most toilets you see sit flush with (HAR!) the wall, so the Riker Maneuver would not be possible. But there are toilets that are free-standing, away from any walls, and it’s these toilets I like to believe that Jonathan Frakes has in his house. I like to believe he had them installed for the express purpose of being able to sit on them using his unparalleled leg-over-top method. Please, Mr. Frakes. Please tell me that’s how you sit on the potty.