photo credit: bradleygee

Everyone loves traveling, as you can tell by the traffic jams we find ourselves in.  Many long trips result in the experience of using public restrooms, which is a wonderful convenience, however it also has its drawbacks.

Here is a quite  humorous story about a woman’s public bathroom experience.   It is somewhat lengthy, but I am sure you will agree that it was worth reading the whole thing.

When you visit a public bathroom, you usually find a line of women, so you smile politely and take your place.

Once it’s your turn, you check for feet under the stall doors. 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. It doesn’t matter, the wait has been so long you are about to wet your pants! The dispenser for the modern “seat covers” (invented by someone’s Mom, no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook, if there was one, but there isn’t – so you carefully, but quickly drape it around your neck, (Mom would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR! ), yank down your pants, and assume “The Stance.”

In this position your 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 mother’s voice saying, “Honey, if you had tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!”

Your thighs shake more.
You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday – the one that’s still in your purse. (Oh yeah, the purse around your neck, that now, you have to hold up trying not to strangle yourself at the same time). That would have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible. It’s still smaller than your thumbnail.

Someone pushes your door open because the latch doesn’t work. 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 your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, lose your footing altogether, and slide down directly onto the TOILET SEAT. It is wet of course.

At this point, you give up. You’re soaked by 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, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past the line of women still waiting.

You are no longer able to smile politely to them. A kind soul at the very end of the line points out 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 in the woman’s hand and tell her warmly, “Here, you just might need this.”

As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has long since entered, used, and left the men restroom.

Annoyed, he asks, “What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?”

This is dedicated to women everywhere who deal with a public restrooms (rest??? you’ve GOT to be kidding!!).

It finally explains to the men what really does take us so long.

It also answers their other commonly asked questions about why women go to the restroom in pairs.

It’s so the other gal can hold the door, hang onto your purse and hand you Kleenex under the door!