SCOUTING REPORTS (VOL. 1)

There are only two public bathrooms that I have ever refused to use.  One was in the Mall of America, the other in a mall on Broadway Avenue in Seattle.  These two, and these alone among the many, many public bathrooms I’ve used, were so far beyond the tolerable levels of filth and squalor that, upon entering (at full sprint, as usual), I suddenly had no real need to use them after all.  Frankly, I wish I could make my systems seize up like that on command — it would save me a lot of hassle. 

Usually, when I go to a mall, restaurant, library, or any other public place . . .

No, let’s start that over. 

Always, anytime I go anyplace outside a one-block radius of my own personal bathroom, I try to figure out the location of the closest commode.  It’s the first thing I do when I enter a restaurant, the first question I ask when starting a new job.  Bathroom.  Where is it?  How many steps, exactly, will it take me to get there?  Let’s see, if I could run 100 meters in twelve or thirteen seconds back when I played soccer in high school, and if there are three tables, two potted plants and an oblivious server with a tray piled high with platters between me and the bathroom, it should take . . . oh, about X minus half a second to get to the toilet, where X is the amount of time it takes for all hell and certain other things to break loose.  Fortunately, though, I usually do get there with a few milliseconds to spare.  But it helps to make these calculations before you need them.

So it is that I am well-versed in the precise locations of public (and private) restrooms across my hometown of Minneapolis, and various cities I have visited, and also have a fairly good knowledge of the state of cleanliness of said bathrooms, as well as other details such as which of the stalls have doors that actually shut or, for that matter, doors at all.  You’d think this would be an important feature, but I’m constantly amazed at how many bathrooms lack this basic amenity. 

The stalls at the Pike Place Market in Seattle don’t really have doors, FYI.  Oh, sure, someone has put up a piece of laminated wood, on a hinge and with a cheap little latch, across the front of each stall.  But this “door” appears to be all of two feet high. 

I don’t think that counts. 

When you’re in there — and I have been, out of necessity — and other people walk into the bathroom, it’s pretty hard to ignore the fact that everyone can see you.  You can try to pretend that there’s a real door there, and you can bet that the people who walk by, or those who stand and wait for their turn in the stall, will also pretend that there’s some magical door there.  In fact, everyone in the bathroom reaches a sort of silent pact: Yeah, there’s a door there.  I can’t see that half-naked guy.  But, of course, you and every part of your body, as well as your lucky Incredible Hulk green underwear, are entirely visible to everyone more than two feet tall.  

So skip that one, if you can.  

European airports, on the other hand, have great stalls with decent toilet paper.  The stalls are little rooms, with thick walls that run nearly from floor to ceiling and generally have a nice, sturdy latch that closes with a satisfying “thunk.”  Major American airports, like American sports stadiums, frequently have just a couple of stalls in each bathroom, some of which may even have doors, and some of those may even have all of their hinges intact, and a small portion of this subset might, if you are very lucky, have latches or at least some remnant thereof.  Possibly toilet paper, too.

All airport bathrooms these days, American or otherwise, seem to feature those auto-flush devices.  In theory, they sense when you leave the stall and flush automatically at that point.  Yeah, right.  I have yet to encounter one that works properly.  Instead, they flush, well, pretty much whenever they feel like it.

After you’ve been sitting on on of these toilets for a while, if you so much as nod your head or crack your knuckles, you will hear a sudden, horrible whooshing sound, which will be followed by the sensation of a small-scale tornado, and then a really, really cold geyser, below your derriere.  You will jump.  This will be difficult, since you will be starting from a seated position.  But I can assure you: You will jump.  Ice water on your butt tends to have that effect.  (Don’t believe me?  Try this fun experiment at home: Sit down to watch a movie with a friend.  Give him or her a glass of ice water and instructions to pour the water down your pants, unannounced, at some point in the middle of the movie.  I predict that this will not be a pleasant experience.)

As you curse modern technology and wipe the foul spray off you skin and try to get your heart rate to return to nor—

WHOOSH!!

There it goes again.  And, not too long later, again.  I sometimes wonder if there’s some security guard in a room somewhere, watching for possible terrorist activities in the washroom and randomly pressing some sort of flush remote control mechanism. 

The alert level has been elevated to . . . BROWN!  Ha!  [Flush!] 

At least airport bathrooms are easy to find — they’re everywhere.  In some public buildings, you need the directional acumen of a master orienteer and the endurance and speed of a champion marathoner to get to the lavatory within a few hours.  Malls have maps, but they aren’t necessarily accurate or helpful, especially in the bigger ones where all the hallways stretch longer than a runway and look pretty much the same.  I know it’s by the GAP . . . but which one?? 

Restaurants are even worse.  A simple query about the location of the public bathroom can yield a complicated series of directions and send you on an adventure so daunting and fraught with peril that you wonder if you’re living in some adventure movie — “Indiana Jones and the Hidden Hallway of Exploding Colons.” 

Off you run, trying to remember the directions and praying that this will be the exception to the Crohn’s Corollary to Newton’s First Law: Gastrointestinal Objects At Rest Will Not Stay At Rest For Long, and Will (Apparently) Become Set Into Motion Spontaneously. 

As you sprint, awkwardly so as not to disrupt things too much, you repeat the directions in your head:  “It’s easy, sir.  Just go down the hall, up the elevator, around the corner, into the alley, past the dumpster, through the red door, to the end of the dimly-lit passageway, just beyond the sign that says ‘Do not enter.’ ” 

Eventually, triumphantly, you find your destination.  But then, inevitably, you will encounter another Crohn’s Corollary, this one to Murphy’s Law: The Further A Public Bathroom Is From Your Original Location, The More Likely That It Will Be Locked. 

So you hustle back, wondering when the foul time bomb ticking within will explode, hoping it won’t be in public, really hoping it won’t be in front your dinner date, whom you were desperately trying to impress before you had to excuse yourself to embark on a journey to the Land of the Lost Toilet. 

“Sorry, bro,” the server says.  “I forgot.  We lost the key the other day.  But there’s a bathroom in the mall just across Broadway. . . .”