What is it About Public Restrooms?
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack
Nothing brings home people's inhumanity to each other more than a trip to a public restroom.

What is it about a public restroom that makes people completely forget any kind of common courtesy? I can understand callous and brutal conduct at a Prada shoe sale but the total lack of consideration for others illustrated in public restrooms is unbelievable!

I know standing in line for the restroom can take forever but it's part of the `woman package': you have breasts, you have to wait longer for things but you also get most of your drinks for free. Seems like a pretty fair trade to me. But, once you have made it into the bathroom remember your poor sisters who are still waiting their turn. This is not the time for a full makeover. Try to make like Speedy Gonzalez (you know, pee quickly, wash your hands and return to the table ruining everyone's chance to talk about you behind your back). If I am outside the bathroom door, banging on it and contributing helpful encouragement like "Are you f@cking done yet?" or "What, did you hit a water buffalo?" you are spending WAY too much time in there to the detriment of your waiting sisters. What have you done in there anyway that requires a complete makeover? Or maybe I don't want to know...

There are two major evils one can encounter when visiting a women's restroom. I still haven't figured out which is worse. First is going into the stall after a sloppy Sally chick, who makes an art of squatting rather than sitting on a public toilet and proceeds to urinate all over the seat, has been in there before you. (As punishment, these women should be forced to sit bare ass on said toilet seat after last call in a college bar. That'd teach `em!) Then you have those chicks who think their asses are so precious that they cannot touch common porcelain and use a toilet `donut'. I'm all for using a toilet donut but for God's sake if you use one, be courteous and DISPOSE OF IT!!!! Do not walk out of the stall and leave it there on the seat like an advertising hand bill on the windshield of your car! Trust me it will not fly away on its own! Punishment for a non-flush of the toilet donut should be to have to wear one around your neck like a collar for the rest of the evening!

And have you ever noticed that if you excuse yourself from the table with the "powder my nose" or other bathroom euphemism, that it seems every woman within hearing distance will announce her intention to join you? What is up with that? Why is it that such a personal and solitary experience tends to develop into a social pack situation? I know I have the ability to get to the bathroom and back to the table safely without a sherpa guide...or ten.

And why do we feel it's necessary to say where we are going? If you get up from the table, just excuse yourself and be done with it-no bathroom euphemisms are necessary for clarification. I mean really, where the hell else would you be going? Excuse me I'm off to a poetry slam?

When all is said and done, I despise public restrooms so much that I have actually considered having myself catheterized in order to avoid visiting these dens of nastiness.