Will Women Stand for It?
“You’ll watch the door for me?”
“Sure,” said the burly customer reaching into the hot pocket cabinet in a near-deserted filling station convenience store, an oasis on a minor road in the middle of nowhere.
I’d been staring in dismay at the “Out of Order” sign on the women’s room door, contemplating my options for vegetative cover in a prairie landscape, when he’d emerged from the men’s room and offered that there was no one else inside.
“Thanks!” I waved and rushed in.
The lock-less restroom sported a stall and a urinal. “Better make this quick,” I thought as I stepped into the stall.
No matter the pent-up volume of coffee, the floodgates can only handle so many gallons per minute. I was not fast enough. I heard the door open. Footsteps. A zipper. The flow of liquid.
Curse you, hot-pocket-noshing betrayer of trust!
I tidied myself up and bided my time, assiduously avoiding the view through the crack. I heard the zipper again. Running water. Ratcheting from a towel dispenser. The door. “Excuse me.”
No! Another one!
A friend posted a wonderful HuffPo piece exhorting old ladies to break the bathroom gender barrier because, well, we can. If you haven’t read it, enjoy:
It reminded me of a joke my father used to tell back in the ’70s when things unisex were in vogue: My office wants to change to unisex bathrooms, but they don’t know if the women will stand for it. Hahaha.
But it’s not the women.
Ensconced in a stall, I have no idea who’s next door — man, woman or Wookiee — unless they ask for toilet paper. The only thing I care about is whether my fellow bathroom users hit the bowl, not the seat, or, God forbid, the floor. But then I’m not hanging it out in the breeze.
Maybe old men are the ones who need to skip to the loo.
No sooner had the next zipper come down than the door opened again. Footsteps. The stall door rattled.
Crap! My voice was going to give me away for sure, but I couldn’t have him busting down the door thinking there was a dead guy inside.
“Hi!” I proffered. “I’m trapped in here. The ladies’ room is broken. I’ve been waiting for the coast to clear so I can slip out.”
Lots of shuffling silence. A zipper. “OK. We’ll just step outside.”
“Thanks!”
Back at a now extraordinarily clean van I found my husband washing the rear window. “What took you so long?” he asked.
