This is the second post I have written that contains the word urinal. The first one is located here. It had a happy ending. This one is harder to categorize.
I apologize in advance.
You know the drill: The entire family is on the open road, finally making good time, when someone needs to go to the bathroom.
Now!
As a father, my responsibility is to interrogate the person requesting the stop, in order to gauge the sincerity and urgency of the need. When the proper threshold has been met, you begin to look for a bathroom – or a place to pull over. (This is one area in life where boys have a distinct advantage over girls.)
It is at this time that my EC will asks her question: If we stop there to use the bathroom, shouldn’t we buy something? Her concern is the same, whether we are stopping at a gas station, convenience store, or fast food outlet. This is because she is just and kind by nature. And also a little bit chicken that someone might yell at her for using the bathroom without buying something.
Here is my philosophy on the subject: I believe that I have put enough money into the McDonald’s Universe, that I have earned the right to unlimited, lifetime bathroom breaks. So, I have no moral conflict about it.
Where I am conflicted is that it is hard to find a public restroom that is not vile. (Again, boys have a distinct advantage in area of emerging from a disgusting bathroom uncontaminated.)
Last weekend we were on a family road trip when we needed to make a stop. No, it wasn’t my EC, or any of the FOMLs. It was me. Apparently I can’t hold a 44oz like I used to back in the day. Must be an age thing. TMI? Look at the title – I warned you!
We found a place to stop. I won’t say the name, but they want me to “have it my way”. On a scale of 1-10, the restroom was about a 5. Not quite toxic, but not somewhere I desire to spend much time.
I did my business, then walked over to the sink to wash up. There was only one sink, and it was in use. A young man was busily washing his hands. Soap, water, scrub, scrub scrub, rinse. Then he started over – soap, water, scrub, scrub, scrub, rinse.
I thought this guy must be prepping for surgery or something. Or, maybe he is just thorough. Or maybe he knows that the CDC – Center for Disease control says that to be effective, you have to wash, with soap, for at least 20 seconds? 20 seconds is a LONG time. Don’t believe me? Start counting now. They also say that anti-bacterial soap makes no difference. (Here is a link to their handwashing page, if you need convincing)
Sorry, back to the story. I’m still standing there, waiting for my chance to wash, when Mister OCD hit the soap and started washing for a third time. I began to feel a a cross between impatient and unclean.
Finally he finished, and moved over to the jet-engine hand dryer mounted on the wall, as I stepped up to the sink. I spent a good 10 seconds washing, and we both finished at the same time.
As I stepped up to take my turn at the dryer, he turned and walked…to the urinal – and unzipped.
I thought “Whaaa?”
I was baffled. But by the time my hands were dry, and I was reaching for the scary doorknob, it began to make sense.
Think about it.
LDS humorist Mormon humor
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I remember a talk by Elder Nelson a number of years ago (and I’m too lazy to try to find it) in which he talked about the body’s remarkable capacity to withstand disease (he refected on the matter as he watched a couple of Latin American kids playing in dirty water).
I am not nearly as germaphobic as my dear wife (or at least one of my kids, who is a bit OCD), but I do wash my hands!
And I trust that I’m safe taking the sacrament. (But I sit up front, so there are few little fingers rooting through the bread before it gets to me…)
Regarding Sacrament trays. Although I have no doctrinal backing for my opinion, I believe I am not going to contract any disease from partaking of the sacrament. And I would hope that I am focusing on other things at the time. But that’s just me.
Yuck and yuck. But it makes sense. And to the last comment about sacrament trays…
I agree! How many times have I seen kids examine each piece of bread on the tray with their hands, before picking one?! AND….having seen them sneeze or wipe their nose or stick their fingers in their mouth before getting the tray in their row. Yuck, and yuck!
Speaking of germs. Hello sacrament tray…you can SEE the germs on that thing!
Two thoughts:
1. There is a very sad scene in the movie The Aviator where Hughes, giving into his OCD, cannot bring himself to touch the interior doorknob of the men’s room in order to leave. Noting the number of people I have seen failing to wash has, at times, made me find other ways of opening the door.
2. “Back in the day” when I served aboard ship, my first ship went into a shipyard, where I learned to wash before taking care of business in the head.
Ok your title cracks me up: keeping IT clean. Sounds like a good idea the more I think about it.
(ANON/M) When I came to the US in 1957, the only thing the LM’s told me was, “You’re going to LOVE the restrooms!” (odd but maybe they were tired of the stiff, sandpaper-like TP of France and the lack of public reststops, specially for females). On the trip from NY to SL I, indeed, found the restrooms GORGEOUS…spacious, modern and sparkling clean. My, how things have changed! Now, yes, I would wear a hazmat suit in some places.
Maybe he had just had to deal with a kid’s “accident” and his hands were dirty before he started. Maybe you should learn to open the door with you elbow.
I don’t get it.
Perhaps he is very concerned about keeping a clean winky. Or maybe there was poop on the doorknob…
Poor guy. He’s obsessing quite a bit there. Is it really worth all that time and worry??
How times have changed! I can scrub up with the best of them. AND open the door without every touching the germ-infested knob.
Funny thing. When I was in with my son to get his shots before his mission, the doctor told us that North Americans are the poorest travellers, because we are too clean. There’s some food for thought. So to speak.
The only men I’ve seen wash before and after were scientists or doctors. That makes sense. I’m still not converted to washing before.
I generally don’t buy something just to use the bathroom, but I was in a little hippie town in Arizona a few weeks back (Bisbee). The gas station had no public restroom, so we ended up using the restaurant at a little chocolate shop. Unfortantely, we had 2 families and 10 kids with us, so I felt bad and bought some $2.50/piece chocolates. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t worth the price.
Great post. I am not a germaphobe, but under the proper circumstances I can be. I was once travelling in Eastern Europe with a group of tourists and our bus driver pulled into a gas station and offered to check the faciilities before he let people off to use the bathroom. He came back and in his Austrian accent said “Those bathrooms would require you all to have boots”. Nobody argued with him, we kept going.
how did he ever leave the rest-room?
I was taught in an “Infection Control” class sponsored by the WY Dept. of Health that you should wash your hands while singing (to yourself, please) the Happy Birthday song 3X. That gets a little weird after a while.
When I traveled to St George every month for work, I learned quickly which were the “nice” restrooms, had vanilla for my diet coke, and didn’t give me dirty looks for just using the restroom. Takes experience.
And now I am concerened about the hand air dryers. Perhaps I should just start carrying my own roll of paper towels
Once upon a time my cousin came out of the bathroom at my grandma’s house and she asked him if he had washed his hands. His response? “Why? I took a shower before I got dressed so it’s clean. I should wash my hands before I touch it.” 🙂
I am completely stumped.
Sidenote: Kansas has the best rest stops and bathrooms. No joke. It’s all they got. They should put a urinal on their state flag they are that nice.
I overheard a parent scolding her kids a few years ago about opening a door with their hands. I giggled and thought her paranoid.
Fast forward to the “swine flu” scare. We were in Mexico.
We now teach our children that they need to do “proper” washing, coughing and sneezing in elbows, no handshaking (even at church) and we sanitize when we see the handy dispensers (and when we get back into our van).
I wish that we could live in a world that it was safe to touch that doorknob, but alas, we do not.
(and my boys pee on the side of the road at all opportunity and I am jelous!)
“Again, boys have a distinct advantage in area of emerging from a disgusting bathroom uncontaminated.”
Ironic, eh? Considering they are the causes of much of the contamination of the family bathroom at home…
Well, I would certainly hate to burst that guys bubble with this:
http://www.europeantissue.com/pdfs/090410%20T%C3%9CV%20-%20Study%20of%20different%20methods%20used%20for%20drying%20hands%20Sept%202005.pdf
Hand dryers have been shown to INCREASE the amount of bacteria on the hands. Imagine taking all that gunk in the air and having it blown on your wet hands, add heat, and voila!
A less gross way to look at it might be, in our politically correct, coughing in elbows, no handshake world, the children are taught about a new type of “proper hand washing”. My two small school aged boys certainly didn’t learn their obsessive hand washing techniques from me. They rinse, soap, rinse and repeat. My older two (ten year gap) have the less thorough method. I blame public school.
I probably would wave been the kid who drank my hand sanitizer just to get through the rest of the day after lunch.