Potty Talk

by Stephanie Anderson

The bathroom is a highly sensitive location. We make excuses for going to it, and even give it pet names, as if saying "the little girls room" or "the head" actually secures from our audience our destination or intent. While in the restroom, not resting, we avoid the eyes of and certainly conversation with our fellows. No matter how many Everybody Poops books are penned, there will still exist some degree of social discomfort about this universal and frequent bodily function.

Why then, Why, when it is clear that this is a potentially embarrassing task, do establishments insist on upping the ante? The only thing worse, it seems than going to the bathroom with members of your sex, would be to walk into the same room intended for the opposite. The nightmare of happening into the wrong bathroom ranks right after standing before an all-school assembly in your underwear.

Despite the potential embarrassment of their patrons, restaurants, bars, and various public gathering places have found a need to creatively mark the respective doors of their male and female bathrooms. Some have taken to using photographs that require close examination to decipher who is who. Some use drawings, where you actually need to form an art history panel to analyze. I hope you don't frequent foreign locales, or that if you do, you read up on travel conversation for the appropriate language, because, at a glance, "senor" and "senorita" are similar words.

I was recently at a fast food establishment, somewhere I expect to be a final strong hold of plastic, faux wood signs, donning, in bleach white, "WOMEN" and the universal skirted stick figure. Instead, when I politely excused myself from the company of my charming companion, I found two doors marked "M" and "W." One the exact inverse of the other, Isn't there some pro-dyslexic legislation to protect us from this sort of outrage.

At least the toilets in this country can be used for free, but we wouldn't have them strewn about if they weren't a necessity. They need not be adorned or made festive in any way. Please, I'll just take mine clean and clearly marked.