Bathrooms

*A few years ago, I wrote this on my English blog and somehow it seems topical again.

" A very private place

In today’s acceptable society, many cultures have indoor plumbing. Like electricity, television, and automobiles; the bathroom has become an essential item in everyone’s lives.

Every animal has to defecate and about 3000BC the ‘Age of Cleanliness’ started the sewer system and public baths.

The privy or outhouse came about around the early 1800’s.

Powder room, lavatory, water closet, loo, restroom, commode, chamber pot, john, head, the necessary, the porcelain throne and many others have described this most private of spaces.

So why get on this most personal of subjects? The bathroom is one place of ultimate privacy. This is the one room where there is a reason to be alone and it is acceptable.

There are few places you can go now to be alone with your thoughts. Constant bombardment of electronic messages and the blur of noise distract us from ever being able to contemplate ideas or just daydream.

Other than taking a walk in the woods, there are few places for total quiet. The quiet our great idealistic thinkers used to ponder thoughts that became our philosophy, mathematics, science, and much more.

So the bathroom is a sparkly gleaming example of what our creativity has produced. A bathroom is wonderment to ingenuity and a selling point to every realtor.

And while we are comfortable in our own bathrooms and our personal surroundings, what do we feel when we share another’s? It is an adventure into a hidden space.

Now not to be too critical, but some prepare their bathrooms for guest. There are all sorts of cute nick-knacks and soft soaps and monogrammed towels, but there is only one reason someone closes the door to that room. The bathroom, more than the painting on the walls or the drapes or the rugs or furniture or even kitchen appliances declare how we live.

Now who would ever want to go into a public restroom? How many hundreds of unseemly people have placed their keysters on those seats? How often are they decontaminated? Would you let your children in there?

My bathroom would not make five stars in Better Homes and Gardens. The spiders help me brush my teeth, the tub was cleaned within this century, the floor is unsteady, and the porcelain throne will give pause. Yet it is a functioning room and accomplishes my needs.

My point is while you are sitting in your bathroom doing your business get off you’re Wi-Fi and be thankful for a place to be alone. This might be the last recluse of our society.

Oh, and don’t forget the air freshener."

10/11/2014

So now the potty is back in the news and it seems boys and girls can't use the same restrooms. It seems that the males gender cannot control themselves while defecating and it is a danger to the girls changing tampons.  Even though we don't ask who just took a crap in our hotel room or the gas station or those blue boxes are every event, we must separate the sexes when they need to pee. 

Now I don't know about you, but my house has one bathroom. It is not a blue bathroom or a pink bathroom. Friends and family have used the same bathroom without reservation except to say the toilet paper was hung the wrong way. There may have been some amorous moments in the bathtub or shower but most public relieving areas do not have showers. 

Don't know what it is like in the girl's gym, but you got to chuckle at the little boys standing side by side at the urinals taking a peek at each others wee-wee to compare their own manhood. 

And standing at a sink in front of a dirty mirror with a guy or a girl or whatever you want to be doesn't seem to be the most sexual attracting activity. 

So LBGTQXY&Z, I don't care if we sit side by side. I won't get excited if you put on make up while I shave. I am not concerned if the tampon machine is next to the condom machine and the writing on the walls will be much more entertaining.