The Modern Boy and the Public School Restroom Part II

I have to say that the comments I got about the last post were very good, although I had one relative tell me the ladies room was just as bad. Hey, I just always thought they looked something like this, but with perfume dispensers and lockable stalls.

The public school restroom, though, is a totally different situation. I can totally understand Finch's phobia and total avoidance of using the high school's bathroom in American Pie. He was just rightfully concerned about the cleanliness of a room which is on the final "get to if necessary" checklist of the school janitor.

For myself, and many other modern men, cleanliness wasn't the major problem with the school bathroom Although I don't remember soap every being provided in any of my school bathrooms. That may be because some idiot ripped the dispensers off the wall, or it was considered an expendible budget item after years of educational cutbacks.

The real issue of the public school bathroom wasnt' that your friend Mark always tried to hit the urinal from ten paces (and I don't mean "Hit" as in striking with a blow). It wasn't that the high school bathroom was actually full of long haired kids who were really smoking in the boys room. It wasn't even that you began to wonder where the bathroom pass you were carrying might have been placed by the hundreds of students before you who had carried before you. After all, it always seemed to be a little moist. It wasn't the off chance one of the school bullies would show up at the same time you did and attempt to see if you could be flushed down the toilet. No, it wasn't even the urinal 'cake' that someone creative had placed in the only working sink.

It was the stalls, or let's say, lack there of. At my high school, most of the bathrooms had no doors on the stalls. The urinals were of course, on the far side of the stalls, so you usually ended up getting the uncomfortable "How you doin' " as the next ten people walked through the door and tried not to make eye contact as they passed by. How do you answer that question with your pants around your ankles? Is there any dignified way? On the positive side, at least there was good reading material on the walls.

The locker room was worse. It was the most pristine bathroom I had ever seen. Clean floors, sparkling white toilets, and not a stall or wall to be found. Plus, there was no door entering the room, so if you had to "do the 2" you knew that the entire football team would be walking by on the way to or from their lockers. When they wave, was I supposed to wave back? Is this supposed to help in bonding? Who planned this? I'm begging somebody to tell me. Do I need serious counseling? Good Lord, am I sweating as I even recall this?

Thank God the modern man can drink beer.

My wife seemed to think that I was adding a little truthiness to my stories to gain sympathy for my childhood. Then one day, we were in a middle school for a conference when it happened. I walked into the boys bathroom, fully confident that bathroom technology has changed so much in the past 20 years there would be no worries. I walked to the only stall in the room and may have screamed like a girl.

There was no door on the stall.

Needless to say, after pulling my wife into the bathroom to show her proof of my previous rantings she finally acquiesced and agrees I'm not crazy.

Although I may have heard her mumble the word "truthiness" after she told me that.