Like most people, bathrooms are a part of my daily life. Bathrooms are also where some of my most memorable moments happen, and I 'm not just talking about those moments when the Metamucil finally kicks in.
No one likes to talk about what goes on behind closed doors - oh sure, they're an open book about their sex lives, but mention poop and the average person goes apopleptic. But the raw truth is that nearly all of us poop more than we have sex, so why the shroud of secrecy?
I break a lot of toilet seats. The first time it happened, I was horrified. I screeched in a high-pitched, terrified, girly girl voice "Oh my God!!! My ass must be getting HeeeeUGE!!!" and then spent three hours trying to view my ass from a tiny cosmetic mirror that I laid on my wheelchair seat as I hovered over it by holding myself up on the arms on the chair. All I could see was an extremely close-up view of my hoo hoo, which only made me move closer to the toilet so I could hurl.
By the third broken seat, I'd come to terms with both the reality that my ass is, indeed, growing, and that toilet seats are now made of the cheapest plastic available on the planet. For these reasons, my toilet is now adorned with a thirteen pound wooden monstrosity with steel hinges. If I break this one, I'm applying to be the toilet seat Kung Fu champion of the world...and I wouldn't bet against myself.
Public restrooms come with their own sets of rules. One of the most important rules is to always knock on the door of the wheelchair-accessible stall and ask the person camping out inside if they're going to be long (of course, I peek under the door first to make sure they aren't mobility challenged). The responses I get are varied. Sometimes I am met with silence. Other times I am met with "use another stall". I love that response. If there is no one else in the restroom, I will proceed to attempt to enter another stall, my wheels ramming against the narrow door frame, my chair coming nowhere near to fitting through the doorway. Even if it could, the regular stalls are not deep enough for me to close the door behind me once I get close enough to transfer to the toilet. It's not that I have an aversion to peeing with the door open, it's just that most other people aren't comfortable with that concept in the United States. But me ramming my chair against the door frame shakes all the stall walls, which I am certain causes the person in the wheelchair-accessible stall to feel very happy they are already sitting on the toilet. While this may seem like it would be very fun, it isn't. There is a reason I go into a public restroom, and it isn't to help resolve a constipation issue for some unsuspecting person. Having poor bowel and bladder control means that being forced to "wait" can also mean being forced to sit in a pool of my own secretions. I do wish Pampers came in adult sizes. They smell so nice...like baby powder and second chances.
I have a secret shame: I love the reaction of people as they exit the wheelchair-accessible stall and see me sitting there, a serene smile on my face (hey, you'd smile too if you got to buy new pants as often as I do). Most of them hurry past me, muttering under their breath (probably about how stinky I am, or how rude it is for me to sit there and make them feel embarrassed. I don't know. I can never make out what they're saying). I don't really blame these folks. The wheelchair-accessible stall is huge. Who doesn't enjoy a little elbow room while evacuation their bowels? Those standard stalls are narrow, and dark. A woman could insert a tube of lipstick instead of a tampon under those lighting conditions. A claustrophobic woman could go into a full-blown panic attack in such a confined space. Frankly, I think all teenagers should be forced to spend a night in a standard public restroom stall just to discourage them from a life of crime. An honest look at public restrooms reveals some very interesting facts: 1) People prefer larger stalls. 2) One wheelchair-accessible stall isn't sufficient in most public restroom facilities. People would shop longer if the public restroom facilities at major shopping centers and large stores were designed to these principles of human nature. No woman wants a tube of lipstick inside her lady parts, and let's face it, putting lipstick on that thing won't make it look any better.
I was once in a bar in upstate New York where the only women's restroom was so small the door into the restroom couldn't close with my chair inside. Needless to say, there was also not a wheelchair-accessible stall, forcing me to adopt a Herculean means to hurl myself onto the toilet from outside the stall. A woman stood in the doorway of the bathroom as I peed in plain view of the nice folks playing pool just outside the door. I'm hopeful they were all so drunk they thought they were hallucinating, because if they weren't, I fear I have seared the eyeballs of a whole lot of innocent men and women with an image they cannot un-see.
Soap dispensers are another challenge. Sometimes, they are all set on the back wall and the vanity counters are too deep. Why can't designers just make a point to always put a few randomly placed soap dispensers at locations where children can reach them? If they did this, there would never be an issue for those in wheelchairs. Public restroom designers, however, do not think in terms of convenience, they think in terms of design. The two concepts are often poor bedfellows. When I cannot reach the soap dispensers, I must ask another woman to put the soap on her hand, and then transfer it to mine. This would be fine if it were a unisex restroom - I could wait for some dapper don to come out and ask him to help a damsel in distress...but alas, public restrooms are not unisex. It's awkward to ask a stranger to do something so intimate with me, but it has yielded some interesting conversations with some pretty cool women. There really isn't anything that brings two strangers together quite like a hand-to-hand soap transfer in a public lavatory
Paper towel holders set high on the wall, resulting in water rolling up my sleeve to my armpit when I reach up to grab one after washing my hands, is another pet peeve. I've learned to grab my paper towels before I wash my hands. Those dang blow-dry hand dryers are even worse. They are nearly always located on the opposite wall from the sinks, meaning I have to roll to them with dripping wet hands. Dripping wet hands means dripping wet handrails, which means my hands slip on them as I try to roll myself. It's not pleasant. Sometimes I press the button on all of the hand dryers in a row and roll back and forth beneath them to try to dry my wheels a bit. Since only about half of the women who use public restrooms actually bother to wash their hands, I only have angry glares from half the women to deal with as they stand there with dripping fingertips. I just grin and shake my long hair from side to side as the warm air blows it around sexily. One of these days, I'm gonna get "discovered"!
Someday, I'm going to write a letter to the Lavatory Design Association and ask them to make all stalls wheelchair-accessible, and outfit them with lighted toilets with pleather seats, armrests, phone charging stations, and to have a full-length mirror on the back wall (to ensure no toilet paper tails). It would also be nice to have a private sink and automatic paper towel dispensers in each stall. While I'm at it, I'm going to suggest wet wipes by Evian, because everyone deserves a pampered ass. Someday, but for now, I'd settle for some bacon-flavored Metamucil and a larger cosmetic mirror.
