It’s natural, right, going to the bathroom?  It just shouldn’t be that difficult, but going to a public restroom nowadays is like a geometry test you just can’t seem to finish.

When I was a kid, it was pretty simple.  You really only needed to know how to do a few things in a bathroom:  Doing #1 and/or #2 were easy.   Step #3, reaching behind you to depress the flush handle, thereby destroying the evidence, was also pretty straightforward.  Finally, you’d lather up a slimy germ-infused bar of soap and yank on the seemingly endless fabric towel rolled up on a spool inside the dispenser.   You went to the bathroom knowing exactly what to expect, and after steps 3 and 4, you simply shut the door.

There were few variations on this theme.  Most every ladies room had the same furnishings and required the same skill set.  The only complication was the occasional pay toilet, a convention women quite rightly blamed on the men who designed them, because at that time men designed everything.   The pay toilet brought out the best  in women who relied on teamwork to sabotage the system by paying it forward.  One generous woman put a nickel in the slot first thing in the morning, then held open the door for the next person.  Women, furious about the pay toilet’s cruel exploitation of the female anatomy and personal needs, would stand holding stall doors for hours, just waiting to offer a sister a seat.  * CEPTIA (The Committee to End Pay Toilets in America) fought for the elimination (pun intended) of pay toilets in the 1970s.  Feminists cheered, then sat down with relief.

Those were the days, my friends, when comfort stations were, well, comfortable.  These days, I am fraught with anxiety every time I have to use a public washroom.  What will be required of me, I think as I enter?  Thankfully, the first requirements, #1 and/or #2, have changed not a whit.  After that, though, all bets are off.

Flushing the toilet is no longer within the user’s purview in today’s public lavatories.   We completely gave up on civility with the implementation of the automatic flush toilet.  Is it really so much to ask that one human extend this simple kindness to another?  Furthermore, the automatic flusher is an imperfect technology.  I recently stood waiting and praying for the toilet to flush.  I pressed my body up against the side of the stall trying to signal that I had really and truly vacated the throne, but there was no flush.  My daughter, who knows me too well, whispered from the adjacent stall that the toilet wouldn’t flush because I was wearing black.  Seriously?  I can’t eliminate while wearing black?  Sometimes there’s the opposite problem:  the overeager flushing system  flushes repeatedly while you’re still seated, achieving an unwelcomed bidet effect.

Once step three is completed, step four, washing up should be easy.  I understand the shared bar of soap just won’t do anymore, but must we really automate the soap dispenser, too?  You wave your arm under the sensor, and not a single sud comes out.  I don’t know how it works in men’s rooms, don’t even know if men bother with soap, but women use a buddy system to alert each other about which one of the eight soap dispensers at the megaplex works.  You cup the little puff of foam like a talisman and go in quest of just a little trickle of water from, dare I say it, the automated faucet.  Once again, it seems, your little black dress makes you invisible to the sensor, and you commence to wave your hand like a magic wand.

The Dyson Air Blade

Finally, finally, it is time to dry your hands, and here you must be very attentive to visual clues.  All drying implements have diagrams instructing you on every facet of dampness elimination.  There might be rubbing hands pictured, or a hand waving as if to the lilt of an aria.  Sometimes there will be several arrows pointing down, perhaps instructing you to wipe your hands on your pants legs.  Occasionally, pictures are accompanied by instructions.  The Dyson Air Blade Dryer, for instance, has a diagram depicting hands moving upward augmented with written instructions telling you to move your hands slowly upwards over a period of 10 seconds.

I travel a lot, and  I’ve become something of a connoisseur of commodes.  It’s true, the world’s getting smaller.  Language is rarely a barrier anymore—some English is spoken nearly everywhere.  But some toilets are as incomprehensible as a foreign language. There is no translator to tell you whether you flush by pulling a chain, pushing a button, depressing  a lever,or stomping on a pedal.  Then there are those environmentally conscious johns in progressive countries like Finland and IKEA where you have to make a decision whether to push down the handle for a big flush or lift up for a little flush; sometimes that’s just not such a straightforward choice.  And what do you do with a bidet?   That’s where you wash your socks.

Instructions for Westerners

Have you ever used a  抽水马桶  in China? The toilets there are squatty potties — essentially  holes in the floor.  If you’re wearing a skirt, you pull it up over your head and tie it in a bow.  If you’re wearing pants, they’re just going to get wet.  And when you go to China, say, or Vietnam, there is sometimes a choice—there will be a couple stalls with squatty potties and a couple with western ones.  Asian women will line up and wait for a squatty potty rather than

See how easy this is?

use one of ours, and non-Asian women will wait for hours for a western toilet, missing the tour bus if necessary.  Now, I get that we should be respectful of cultural differences,celebrate them, even, but really, doesn’t it make more sense to bring the potty up to your bottom rather than your bottom down to the potty?

Japan has an upscale model.   It’s kind of a crapper and IQ test all rolled into one.   There’s a button for a courtesy flush—it’s a fake flush to cover up indelicate sounds.  And there are bidet buttons with helpful options to direct the shower to different parts of the fanny.  The most amazing feature is the mechanism that warms the toilet seat.  You get up in the middle of the night to take a leak, and it’s kind of off putting. You sit down and think, who was here before I was?

Wherever you are in the world, this basic human function of elimination has become unnecessarily complicated.  Once you complete the arduous multi-step task of relieving yourself, you are truly relieved and head for the door.  And at this point, you realize, you have to go again.  Oh, to be a boy with a bush by the side of the road.

*This organization is not just comic relief; it really existed.  My statement is historically accurate and, I regret, the funniest part of this piece.

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