A Delicate Subject
[This post is recycled. Hey, I thought it was a good one and I need to fill in the new parenting blog project. Sue me.]
I have never been one of those girls that needed, wanted, or offered accompaniment to the restroom. I won’t go into my public restroom or port-a-potty phobias now, but suffice it to say that I was really glad child number three was a boy. Now it was dad’s turn to visit every stinking bathroom in every store, restaurant, or gas station we’d pass for the next 10 years.
Privacy is good, and so is maintaining a little feminine mystery – no matter how long you’ve been married. Unfortunately, I do now feel the need to announce my intentions to head off to the privy, as my loved ones seem to get panicky if they don’t know exactly where I am at all times.
This strategy has met with limited success.
EVERY time I go to the bathroom, I hear someone say, “Where’s Mom?” They could be in the basement watching a movie or surfing the internet for hours or even at the neighbor’s house, with not the slightest interest in interacting with me in any way.
Then I quietly depress the lock on the bathroom door, and suddenly we are in a movie thriller with quick cuts and close ups: door shut and locked, antennae up, eyes darting, hair bristling…they are now alert and buzzing with the uneasy feeling that I have just made myself unavailable somehow.
And now a little more urgently, I hear it again, “Where’s Mom?”
I wait and see if someone else has the answer to that burning question, but more often than not I find myself shrieking, “I’M IN THE BATHROOM!” There is no gentle, loving, reassuring quality to the shrieking. No, just fire-breathing, flesh-melting rage from behind the locked door.
So now I am in the most undignified position of having loudly declared my exact location, with little doubt as to my exact activity.
There is an awkward period of waiting.
I can no longer take care of my personal business in leisure, I am now terribly anxious about both the passing of time and judgement concerning my daily constituitional.
So I suppose there’s no hope for it. As long as I continue to cohabitate, I can expect someone will notice when I have to go to the bathroom. The question is: how can I get this to happen when the dog needs to be walked?
