Yesterday I wrote about my cross-country trip. As important as that journey was to me, I’ll ever do anything like that again, not just because my car and I are ten years older, but because risks I took back then could now land me in jail. Well, one particular risk could.
When Jeff and I traveled together and stopped at a truck stop to fill the car and unfill us, we found the difference in the use of male and female restrooms to be staggering. In a lot of cases, both had a single stall, which didn’t take in the reality that women needed longer in the little room. Or perhaps there were more women needing them. Whatever the reason, there were always long lines of women waiting their turn and generally no men. So one day, Jeff suggested I use the men’s room while he stood guard. I was in and out quickly, and despite my nervousness at having done something wrong, it all worked out. The women I passed on my way out, looked at me, looked at each other, looked at the men’s restroom, and suddenly there were two lines of women waiting for both restrooms.
When I traveled alone after he was gone, I continued to sail past long lines of women if there were no men waiting, and head directly to the men’s room. I figured that even if someone noticed, they would prefer my misuse of the restrooms to a puddle on the floor for them to clean up.
There was only one time that I met a man as I was coming out of the room, so I looked back at the designation on the door, shrugged sheepishly, and said, “Sorry.” (Occasionally, it truly was a mistake. When people got too cute about the male and female signs, sometimes it was hard to figure out which was which.)
What once could have gotten me a nasty look now could get me arrested.
When the debate about who can use what restroom started, I thought about those single side-by-side rooms and wondered why men would want to use the women’s restroom. Obviously, they never traveled much because who would want to wait in a long line of jittering women desperate to go when there was a perfectly usable room right next door. (Besides, the solution in those cases was easy — change the signs so that anyone could use either.) Admittedly, there were often several stalls in some restrooms, but there weren’t long lines at those stops, so it wasn’t an issue for me, though I can see where it would be an issue for others. New laws in some states now demand you use the restroom that matches your biological gender, and of all the risks I imagined while traveling, I’d never once considered having to stand before a judge and admit guilty to an overfull bladder.
Hmmm. Do I really want to post this? It’s not something I’ve ever talked about with anyone, and in fact, it’s a bit embarrassing, but what the heck. It’s not the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever posted, or the worst thing I’ve ever admitted, but at least the picture of my garden is pretty.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
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