Mom's Out There

Now all you guys can finally learn why the women’s restroom line is always so damn long!

When you have to 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”; no doubt invented by someone’s mom, 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 had the 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’d 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 will have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible; it’s still smaller than our 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. You bolt up; know all too well that it’s too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered sweat because you never laid down toilet paper – that that there was any, even if you had taken the time to try. You know your mother would be utterly appalled if she knew, because, frankly dear, “You just don’t know what kind of diseases you could get.”

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 against the inside of the bowl and spraying a fine mist of water that covers your butt and runs down your legs and into your shoes. The flush somehow sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the empty toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too.

At this point, you give up. You’re soaked by the spewing water and 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 waiting women,

You are no longer able to smile politely at 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’s room. Annoyed he asks, “What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?”