You have to visit a public toilet but as usual there’s a line of women, so you smile politely and take your place in the queue. Once it’s your turn, you check for feet under the cubicle doors only to find that they’re all occupied.

Finally, a door opens so you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the cubicle. You close the door but find that it won’t latch. At this point it doesn’t matter, the wait has been so long that you are about to wet your pants! The dispenser for the modern ‘seat covers’ (invented by someone’s Mum, no doubt!) is handy, but empty. You would hang your bag on the door hook, if there was one, so you carefully, but quickly drape it around your neck, (Mum would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!) then down with your pants and assume ‘The Stance’.

In this position your aging and toneless thigh muscles begin to shake. You’d love to sit down, but having not taken the time to wipe the seat or to lay toilet paper on it, you hold ‘The Stance’. To take your mind off your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mother’s voice saying, ‘Dear, if you had tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN that there was no toilet paper! Your thighs shake more.

You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday, the one that’s still in your bag which you’ve draped around your neck and which you now have to hold up so as not to strangle yourself. It’ll have to do, so you crumble it in the puffiest way possible. It’s still smaller than your thumbnail. Someone pushes your door open because the latch doesn’t work. The door hits your bag, which is still hanging around your neck in front of your chest and you and your bag topple backward against the tank of the toilet.

‘Occupied!!’ you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, while losing your footing altogether and sliding down directly onto the TOILET SEAT. It is wet of course. You bolt up, knowing all to well that it’s too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your mother would be utterly appalled if she knew, because you’re certain that her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, dear, ‘You just don’t KNOW what kind of diseases you could get’.

By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet seat is so confused that it flushes, propelling a stream of water like a fire hose against the inside of the bowl which sprays a fine mist of water that covers your bum and runs down your legs and into your shoes. The flush somehow sucks everything down with such force and you grab onto the empty toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too.

At this point you give up. You’re soaked by the spewing water and the wet toilet seat. You’re exhausted. You try to wipe with a sweet wrapper that you found in your pocket and then slink out inconspicuously to the wash basins. You can’t figure out how to operate the taps with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel on the walk past the line of women still waiting. You are no longer able to smile politely at them. A kind soul at the very end of the line points out a piece of toilet paper trailing from your shoe. ‘Where was that when I NEEDED it?’ You yank the paper from your shoe, pop it into the woman’s hand and tell her warmly, ‘Here, you might just need this’.

As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has long since entered, used and left the men’s toilet. Annoyed, he asks, ‘What took you so long and why is your bag hanging around your neck?’

 

This is dedicated to women everywhere who deal with public restrooms and toilets (rest!!! You’ve GOT to be kidding!!). It finally explains to men why it really does take women so long. It also answers that other commonly asked question about why women go to the toilets in pairs. It’s so that the other girl can hold the door, hang onto your bag and hand you a Kleenex under the door.