The Public Restroom Experience
You can’t really control when it happens. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Public place or not. Nature calls. You have to go to the bathroom. It seems like it always happens when you go into a public place. Grocery stores, discount stores, clothing stores, book stores, etc…: potty has no preference. Although sometimes it seems to prefer Borders, Target, and Walmart. So, you have to answer it’s nagging call.
There you are; walking down that mysterious hallway with the employee of the month pictures, “I lost 40 pounds in one week” flyers, and multi-level marketing advertisements all around you. Once you reach the end of the hallway you have one last chance to back out of the journey you are about to embark on.The old and rusty monolith of a door now towers in front of you in all of it’s glory. You take the rusty old handle into your sweaty hands and realize that it’s trying to take you with it’s own. After pushing the skanky-old door open and freeing your hand from it’s handle’s greasy grip, you enter the place in which you will leave part of yourself.
Upon entering; a cloud of poisonous gas coming from the moaning homeless man in the handicapped stall overcomes you . In desperation you take one last deep breath as not to take in too much of the Taco Bell bi-product now circulating through the air.
You decide to take your first small step to get to the empty stall about six feet away from you. As you do so, you nearly fall on the cracked-tile floor beneath you because you’ve slipped in the large puddle of misplaced urine in the middle of the room. Regaining your balance, you proceed.
After hopping over several toilet paper and paper-towel land mines you make it to the stall. About this time you remember that you’ve been holding your breathe for quite a while and that you cannot hold it any longer. Just as you take a gasp of air your stall neighbor moans “oh yes” and loudly splashes his kids into the pool. The gas spewing from this catastrophe rushes into your inhaling lungs. Your eyes instantly begin to water and your nose hairs singe.
The urge to use the restroom becomes overwhelming. You decide to breathe normally despite the dangerous conditions. After all, there’s no evidence that hepatitis can spread through the air( is there? ). So, you reach for the hole in the door that used to be a lock to pull it open, but when your fingers enter this hole they stick to the moist gum recently put there. You free yourself and pull the door open by grabbing it’s top.
Once the door opens you notice that hieroglyphs of nudity, difficult sexual positions, and curse words adorn the walls. This disgusts you. Your eyes are then drawn to the clogged toilet and its repulsive contents. Wet toilet paper is wrapped around the toilet as if it was a birthday party streamer. A moan from next door makes you turn your head and notice that there is no toilet paper to wipe yourself. Everything is going wrong! Looking down and contemplating if you should stick around and wait for your pal “Mona” next door to finish; you notice one of the grossest things on this planet: a mustache ring of hair around the toilets rim. You decide to wait for the handicapped stall.
All of the sudden you hear one of the most lovely sounds you’ve heard in a long time. It’s the flush from next door. You patiently wait for “Mona” to exit his stall. The door opens and you make a mad dash for the premises. Unfortunately you and “Mona” must now cross paths. His hair is so soaked with sweat that it looks like he just got out of the shower. You try to avoid eye contact with your new roommate, but it’s inevitable. Just when you thought you were done with “Mona”, he turns and says “enjoy”. You try not to think about what he means by this and make your way towards the handicapped stall.
“Mona” has left the stall door open, so you make your way into the gas chamber. The odor is intoxicating. Every part of your body, mind, and spirit tells you to leave, but you’ve come too far to simply give up. After all, if you did leave you would surely soil yourself. You use your foot to pull the door closed and use your shirt tail like a glove to lock the door. The coast looks clear, so far.
Now that the door is closed and locked you take it all in. The handicapped stall is bigger than a New York City studio apartment. It lacks the disturbing hieroglyphs of it’s neighboring stall. This comforts you. The handicap handles lining the walls of the stall could be used for an Olympic gymnastics competition. You look down to the end of the stall and start your inspection of the toilet. From your vantage point it looks somewhat clean. There are no toilet paper streamers wrapped around it. From where you stand it doesn’t look clogged. You decide to move closer.
It was too good to be true. As you move closer you discover that “Mona” dropped one last kid off at the pool after flushing. His snake-like feces is curled up in the toilet as though it’s awaiting its charmer to play some strange Middle-Eastern flute and make it rise from its motionless state. You stand back and kick the flusher to rid your seat of its unwanted visitor. The power of the flush is so great that it splashes water and other unknown contents all over you. Your hands and face are spared, so you continue on your quest.
You reach for the toilet paper to wipe off the wet seat. As you start to pull it off the roller it begins to tear. These cheap stores always use single-ply toilet paper! This will be a huge problem when it’s time to do your business. So, there you are pulling out the toilet paper single-ply square by single-ply square. Once you have collected enough squares to safely wipe down the toilet seat, you notice your old friend from the previous stall: the mustache ring of hair.
What causes this?! Do people decide to give them selves a haircut while using a public restroom? Do they decide to shave their backs there? Is this some sort of perverted Chia Pet or can the toilet actually grow a mustache? Either way; it’s a mystery and it’s disgusting!
Once everything has been cleaned up you take a seat only to realize that the toilet must have some kind of cooling unit similar to the stone they use at that ice cream place to mix several ice creams together. You’ve come this far: you can handle it.
After a short time passes and you have already read every word off of the toilet paper roller like a book; you decide that you’re done. You start the process of pulling toilet paper squares off one at a time like you are playing “she loves me, she loves me not” with a daisy and then reach down to wipe and you suddenly realize that the water line of the toilet is only about one inch below the rim and you completely submerge your hand! You must now use the small pieces of toilet paper to dry your tainted hand and then use your bad hand to do the rest of the wiping all while being sure not to touch yourself with the now contaminated hand.
You then must hurry and finish so you can thoroughly decontaminate your hand in the sink. So you quickly pull up your pants only to realize that they are wet from the urine soaked floor! Great! So you pull back down your pants and put a few toilet paper squares between your bare (and cold) butt and your clothing as to not get too wet.
After flushing the toilet with your foot, you start to realize that the toilet is quickly clogging and what you have just done will soon be floating out the door and towards the store’s concession stand. So you button your pants and run to the sink while the toilet slowly begins to overflow.
Crap! There’s no handle on the hot water part of the facet so you reach and turn on the cold water and it comes out only a few drips at a time…NO! You push the soap dispenser only to here it make a fart-like noise and nothing comes out. With a few sweeps of your hand under the dripping cold water you realize that the toilets contents are getting closer and closer and for some reason the toilet that you just used won’t stop flushing!
You think to yourself,” Few, only one more thing to do: dry my hands!” But you notice that this facility chooses not to honor their customers with paper towels and only has one of those things that you can pull down a piece of towel-like fabric from and the dirty part that you just used goes back up into the unit only to be used again! Sick!
What now? You notice they have a hand drier and you know that hand driers never work unless you are willing to keep your hands vigorously rubbing together underneath them for 25 minutes. You know that you don’t have that kind of time now because of the toilets contents slowly making their way towards you. Hand drying is skipped altogether and you run out of the bathroom just as the flash flood makes it’s way out the bathroom door.You now have post traumatic stress disorder and are unable to shop at the store and purchase the toilet paper that you came here to get in the first place! As you walk out of the store an elderly “security guard” in a wheelchair shouts,” thanks for shopping at insert store name here. At the sound of his voice you begin to weep because of the trauma that you had just gone through and you swear to yourself that you will never use their bathrooms again……..but……you know you will.
In Kindergarten I was officially voted 'Most Inquisitive'.
I have been asking questions ever since as I believe that they are the catalyst to discovering the world all around us.
The answers to these questions have led me into an everlasting committed relationship with Jesus Christ, into a marriage with the love of my life, and into being the father of the two most beautiful children on earth.
It is my personal mission to glorify God with my life, advance His Kingdom through my ministry, and to love my family with everything I have.
I am the Pastor at Fellowship Church in Salem, Oregon and these are my thoughts on life.