Bathrooms

image found at http://www.briancurranconstruction.com/bath1.jpg via google

Being in a family of seven children, two parents, and one Nana, no one, but Nana had their own room. Mom and Dad choose to share a room, so they can't complain. But all the girls shared a room and all the boys shared a room.

There was a short period when I lived in the closet, all by myself. Dad had built these huge shelves in our walk-in closet, big enough for a sleeping bag, pillow, and moody pre-teen. That lasted until my parents said I kept kicking the wall. Then I had to join the general population.

Not only were there a lot of people who lived there, we had friends over and at any giving time a small zoo of pets consisting mainly of schnauzers and cockatails. All this chaos and only two bathrooms, one of which was in Nana's house and only for emergencies.

Why do I mention bathrooms? The bathroom is the only place where only one person can be at a time, generally. You want some peace and quiet you go to the bathroom. And it lasted pretty much as long as you could make it.

Not big fans of just sitting and just doing one or two things, we are a family of bathroom readers. The house that I grew up in had a drawer full of magazines and books, or you could bring your own material. Sometimes I would go in the bathroom and just sit on the toilet with the lid down, like a chair, while reading.

The peace and quiet was sometimes interrupted by a sibling saying they had to go to the bathroom. Those pleas were generally ignored until Dad got involved and knocked on the door rather loudly while saying "Checkers". Never quite understood that, but when Dad said checkers your "quiet time" was up. The knocking and checkers would not cease until someone emerged and a new person entered. Sometimes a sibling would try to do the knocking checkers, but it was only effective if dad did it.

To this day the bathroom is a sanctuary, a place I go to be alone and get away from it all. Since I live by myself, my bathroom time can go for as long as I want. Unless that is I'm in someone else's restroom or a (excuse my language) public restroom. I hate public restrooms with a passion.


image courtesy of http://www.poopreport.com/Images/BMnewswire/26_stalls.jpg (oh yeah poopreport.com I totally had to visit it. Its everything and more all about number 2...)

There is no privacy. It makes the whole process like an assembly line. You can see through the cracks, you can hear and sometimes smell what's going on next door. There is hardly ever any reading material.

If you have to build bathrooms with partitions make sure there are no cracks and they go all the way to the floor. Although the space at the bottom is helpful if ever you forget to check for toilet paper and there isn't any and you can, as long as the next stall is unoccupied, reach under and borrow some from your neighbor.

Although I discovered the coolest thing ever about the handicap stall in the bathrooms on the first floor of the building where I work. Someone hung magazines on the grab bar. It was fantastic. There are other bathroom readers out there. We are not alone! Darrell's parents have books galore in their bathroom too.

Anyway...back to the public restroom phobia. If ever I build my own office, I'm going to have my own personal bathroom in my office that no one else can use.

Generally I avoid using public or strange bathrooms (strange as in not mine). Sometimes, it just can't be avoided. I generally try to wait to use the public restroom at work when no one else is there and generally unless I'm about to have an accident, if someone else is in there I go back to my desk and wait. There are two reasons. Even if there are enough stalls so you could be a stall over with a stall in between, why do you have to pick the stall next to me? Then the talking...ever had a conversation with a person in the stall next to you? Don't you know bathroom time is quite PRIVATE time??!?!? I know you're there, but I'm pretending you're not and it makes it a whole lot harder when you keep talking to me.

At work the handicap stall is almost like its own room. I try not to go there, because I loose track of time and I'm afraid of someone thinking I've gone AWOL just to see me emerge (one of my new favorite words by the way) from the bathroom. That would be embarrassing.

I love bathrooms, but I hate cleaning them. Especially bathrooms made by people who think bathrooms aren't important and cram everything into the smallest place possible which makes it a pain to clean...

Bathrooms are one of the things I am grateful for.

Since I need to study for finals, I thought I would share with you my thoughts on bathrooms instead of study...

The End!

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