“What are you allowed to touch in the bathroom?” My daughter was querying my granddaughter, reviewing the “Rules For the Usage of Public Restrooms.” Imani promptly answered her mother: “The toilet paper.” I laughed, then cringed, for I had damaged my daughter’s approach to public johns, and by extension, the teaching of her children.
Lisa spent many childhood days pointing out blemishes on toilet seats, sinks and doors in public facilities, and I take full responsibility for that. When she was three years old, her mother went back to school to get a Master’s in Business Administration. For a year, she traveled from Madera, California to Pepperdine University in Malibu, California each Sunday night, returning home the following Thursday. Our three-year-old daughter spent the week with her father, who took her everywhere, wrapped and strapped into the Ford Motor Company’s revolutionary new “Tot-Guard” child seat. While her mother hammered away at the books, Lisa went shopping with her father, and of course, there came occasions when she had to use the bathroom.
1975 was not the year when family facilities were made available for parents of small children, so when my daughter had to “go potty,” I took her into the men’s room. For the uninitiated among you, men’s rooms usually have more urinals than stalls, so a small child walking into the can — well. I developed a strategy: I would swoop up my daughter, and with my hand at her face, scoot past the slobs at the urinals, and into the closest stall. This is where her real trials would begin. Young children never need to use the facilities until the need has reached critical mass. But I am a man, and having seen what we men do to toilets, I could not plop my child onto such filth. After dropping her inside the stall I would go to the paper towel dispenser to rip off several hundred yards of paper. Next, I would punch out a quart of hand soap and wet one hundred yards of paper. Back in the stall, I’d find Lisa doing an urgent “pee-pee dance.” This boogie would continue while I swabbed down the toilet basin, tops and tank. And then, there was the “suspension:” Lisa would hang between my arms while she “went potty,” for that was the “Year Of No Seat-Sitting.”
I have seen few men’s rooms that meet a standard of cleanliness equal to the requirements established for my daughter’s needs. To paraphrase Descartes, “I man, therefore I slob.” When in a stall, I raise the toilet seat (yes, I do) with my right foot, and flush the toilet with my left. At a urinal, I use my elbow to toggle the water. At the sink, I wash my hands, and if the joint gives me the option, use a paper towel to open the door. I hate men’s rooms, and I fear for the women who will have to share a “unisex” restroom with “we few, we mighty few, we pigs of the potty.”
Some men’s rooms now have “changing stations” for the parent or guardian with a toddler in tow, and there is a rising trend toward “gender-neutral” restrooms at some institutions. I find that hopeful. If we men share our spaces with women, perhaps we will make an effort to be more civilized. My 7-year-old daughter splashed down, once, having assumed that the toilet seat was in place. After she angrily told her mother to “tell dad to put the top down,” I never again failed to do so. But to be safe in the public restroom: Don’t touch anything.