by Johnny Guatemala
Oct. 12, 2007
Fellow public restroom users,
Working in an airport, there's thousands of people using the bathrooms everyday. And despite the fact that there are janitors and this isn't Abu Dhabi (where your left hand is a substitute for toilet paper), there's still an unsettling feeling when you have to drop a deuce and you suspect that the "Brotherhood of the Stationary Toilet Seat" has told its magical tale of diverse but hopeful men who all share a common thread in having traumatic bowel movements that unify them as brothers, albeit unknown to them.
Booyah! A well-deserved chick flick insult! But I digress...
As a citizen of a developed country, I relish in my ability to locate and use reasonably sanitary bathroom facilities. I've even become somewhat of a public restroom critic. I know where the cleanest bathrooms are in the airport, and which ones should be avoided like a Madonna album.
The unfortunate thing is that the best restrooms are the farthest ones from my location at the cross-section of airport pedestrian traffic. This makes sense, because the best ones are probably the least used ones. However, when nature calls--or more accurately, yells at you to pay your alimony even though you're not divorced and then starts throwing lamps at your intestinal casing in a drunken rage--you don't have time to take a five-minute trek.
Fortunately, I can avoid the unsure feeling of playing toilet seat Russian Roulette and improve my odds. I'm talking about the handicapped stall, and the Crown Jewel, the "family" bathroom which now functions as my semi-private washroom. Some say that this doesn't observe the proper public restroom etiquette. I say that I don't care. I like using the handicapped stall. I've never had a guy in a wheelchair ram into the door over and over again in a desperate bid to get me out of the stall.
And I like using the family restroom. Seriously, how often does it get used by a family? I've only had one run-in with someone looking to use it for its actual purposes. And do you know what I said to that single mom with a four-year-old squirming from a colon full of chicken fingers and Cheerios? I looked right into her sneer and said, "Hey, I left enough for a family in there. So I don't see what's the big deal."
The best part of that encounter was imagining her afterward having to play potty monitor while basking in the fallout of my Cracklin Oat Bran breakfast/Taco Bell lunch cocktail.
Seriously, I'm in the public restroom usage game for no one but myself. If I'm working here, I'm going to the bathroom here as well. Do you really think I give a damn what a passenger returning to that cage known as Wichita thinks? When will I ever see them again? I reserve the right to squat at whichever stall comforts me with the thought of not picking up a communicable disease. That's what makes me bold enough to violate your perceived etiquettes, which are rarely, if ever breached.
But hey, it's your discomfort. Invest it how you choose.