The Saga of the Public Ladies’ Room

TOILET-SQUATTING EXERCISE CLASS

My mother was a fanatic about public toilets.

As a little girl, she’d bring me in the stall, teach me to wad up
toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then, she’d carefully lay strips of
toilet paper to cover the seat. Finally, she’d instruct, “Never,
never sit on a public toilet seat.”

And she’d demonstrate “The Stance,” which consisted of balancing over
the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your
flesh make contact with the toilet seat. But by this time, I’d have
wet down my leg. And we’d go home.

That was a long time ago. Even now in our more mature years, The
Stance is excruciatingly difficult to maintain when one’s bladder is
especially full. When you have to “go” in a public bathroom, you
find a line of women that makes you think there’s a half-price sale
on Mel Gibson’s underwear in there. So, you wait and smile politely
at all the other ladies, also crossing their legs and smiling
politely. And you finally get closer.

You check for feet under the stall doors.

Every one is occupied.

Finally, a stall door opens and you dash, nearly knocking down the
woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won’t latch.
It doesn’t matter. You hang your purse on the door hook, yank down
your pants and assume “The Stance.” Relief. More relief.

Then your thighs 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 as your thighs experience a quake that
would register an eight on the Richter scale.

To take your mind off it, you reach for the toilet paper. The toilet
paper dispenser is empty. Your thighs shake more. You remember the
tiny tissue that you blew your nose on that’s in your purse. It
would have to do.

You crumble 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
and your purse whams you in the head. “Occupied!” you scream as you
reach out for the door, dropping your tissue in a puddle and falling
backward, directly onto the toilet seat.

You get up quickly, but it’s too late.

Your bare bottom has made contact with all the germs and life forms
on the bare seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that
there was any, even if you had enough time to. And your mother would
be utterly ashamed of you if she knew, because her bare bottom never
touched a public toilet seat because, frankly,

“You don’t know what kind of diseases you could get.”

And by this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is
so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream of water akin to a
fountain and then it suddenly sucks everything down with such force
that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being
dragged to China. At that point, you give up.

You’re soaked by the splashing water. You’re exhausted. You try to
wipe with a Chicklet wrapper you found in your pocket, then slink out
inconspicuously to the sinks.

You can’t figure out how to operate the sinks with the automatic
sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and
walk past a line of women, still waiting, cross-legged and unable to
smile politely at this point. One kind soul at the very enof the
line points out that you are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your
shoe as long as the Mississippi River!

You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the woman’s hand and
say warmly, “Here. You might need this.”

At this point, you see your spouse, who has entered, used and exited
his bathroom and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting for you.

“What took you so long?” he asks, annoyed.

This is when you kick him sharply in the shin and go home.

This is dedicated to all women everywhere who have ever had to deal
with a public toilet.

And it finally explains to all you men what takes us so long.