Don't Get Me Started

I told Sar of Belle of the Brawl not to get me started on public restrooms, but she did anyway. Why the hell do they call them REST rooms? They aren't restful at all!

You know when you have to visit a public women's restroom, you usually find a line of ladies, so you smile politely and take your place. Once it's your turn, and you actually get inside the darn door to the place, you check for feet under the stall doors. Yep. Every stall is occupied.

Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. WTF? It doesn't matter. You gotta go.

The dispenser for the modern "seat covers" (invented by someone's Mama,no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook, if there were one, but there isn't - so you carefully but quickly drape it around your darn neck, (My Mama would turn over in her grave if I put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume "The Stance." If you're female, you know the drill.

In this position our aging, toneless thigh muscles begin to shake. You'd love to sit down, but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold "The Stance."

To take your mind off your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mama's voice saying, "Well, if you had tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!" Your thighs shake more. That Mama. The older I get, the smarter my Mama seems.

You remember the tiny Kleenex that you blew your nose on yesterday -the one that's still in your purse. That will have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail.

Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work. Someone whose Mama didn't teach them to check for feet under the door. Those unfit Mamas. The door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your chest, and you and your purse topple backward against the tank of the toilet. "Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping that precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, lose your footing altogether, and slide down plop onto the dreaded TOILET SEAT. It is wet of course. Those other women!

You shoot straight up, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper - not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try.

Mama would be utterly appalled if she knew, because, I'm positive, absolutely certain, that her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, "You can catch all kinds of horrible, ugly, disgusting diseases from a public toilet." (Mama always screwed up her face real good when she said this.)

By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, propelling a stream of water like a fire hose that somehow sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too. At that point, you give up. What's the point of pretending?

You're soaked by the spewing water and the wet toilet seat. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket and then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks. You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the automatic sensors, or probably they're broken, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel, if there are any towels. Which there probably aren't. Sometimes there's a drinking fountain outside that you can wet your hands on.

As you leave the facility, a kind soul at the end of the line waiting to use the bathroom tells you that you have a piece of toilet paper trailing from your shoe. (Where was that when you NEEDED it??)

You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it the woman's hand and tell her sweetly, "Here, you just might need this." No one tells you that you purse looks nice hanging around your neck like that but finally you notice it as you're walking around feeling dirty.

See guys? This is why women go to the bathroom in pairs.

It's so you have a friend to hold the damn door that won't lock, hang onto your purse, and hand you Kleenex under the door.