Potty Story

 

I was nearly an adult the first time I found myself in a 'fancy' public women's bathroom. I was shocked. They had a whole living room in there. They had a sofa and an end table with a lamp on it. It was very nice and you couldn't even see a toilet from the sofa area. Don't ask me why I was in there because I don't remember, just that I was there. So for the next fifty or sixty years, every time a woman excused herself to go to the bathroom in a public space, I imagined she needed to rest on that sofa. Men's toilets were a whole different story. From early childhood on, I was exposed to some of the weirdest public bathrooms imaginable. It's where I learned the little poem that went like this. "Here I sit broken hearted. Tried to shit but only farted." It was usually carved into the stall wall. Pre-pubescent Alan found that to be very clever. I also found even worse drawings scratched on the walls of toilet stalls. Graphic depictions of what pervy young men thought women looked like naked. There were also scratched or written on those walls,  invitations by men to engage with other men. In the 1950s through the 1970s, public mens bathrooms were an uncivilized free for all.

I haven't been in such a restroom like that in quite awhile. I find every restroom I visit these days to be clean and unsullied. But then again, I haven't been to a Cook County Forest Preserve potty in many, many years. Which by the way, do the women's outhouses in the forest preserves have sofas in them?