It was a day just like any other. I was crossing items off my to do list, when it hit me. I have to go to the bathroom. This somehow sent a magical beacon out into the LiBrandi stratosphere, informing my children that now is the ideal time to ask me the litany of questions they’ve been hoarding all day long. Where is my ipod? Why is the snow melting? What’s for dinner? Why can’t I watch Twilight? The list goes on.
I managed to get into the bathroom by myself, close the door and assume the position. Then, it happened. Gabe, my six year old, opens the door (without knocking despite all my attempts to teach him otherwise), does not even bat an eyelash that I am, in fact, in a room, with the door closed and my pants down, and says, “Mom, I want new shoes.” This, of course, is a discussion that clearly cannot wait. “Gabe, mommy is going potty right now. Please go out, close the door and we can talk about this when I’m finished.” “Okay. But, I just want you to know that I want shoes from that one store that has all those shoes and other sports stuff. Do you know what I am talking about?” Sigh.
Even with one of these, I’ll never get to the bathroom without my little boy.
This is one of the most common curses of motherhood. You cannot go the bathroom without being interrupted. As I was letting Gabe’s chatter fade into the cosmos and imagining life as a man, where you can spend 30 minutes in the bathroom with reading material, coffee and your phone without anyone even thinking about barging in on you, I realized that we have been training for this since 12 or 13. Women have never gone to the bathroom alone. We started our bathroom sharing when we were young.
Who doesn’t remember being a teenager and asking your bestie to go to the bathroom with you so that you could have five minutes of girl time to talk about world issues, like the cute guys at the party, your new lip gloss and how bad Beth looks in her jeans.
This continued on in college. You needed a friend to hold the door for you that surely didn’t latch at the cheap bar bathroom or to hold your beer (in plastic cup) so you could balance yourself on the walls as you squatted over the toilet because it was too gross to sit on. Ah, the memories…
Even today, while I don’t talk about how people look in their jeans (because I don’t look that great in my jeans if we’re being real), and I know my lip gloss is great and the only cute boy I’m focused on is my husband, I still want my friends to go to the bathroom with me. The conversation today is more like, “do you know where she got those throw pillows? I really like them. That chicken salad was great. I wonder if the recipe is on Pinterest. Does my ass look fat?” You know this conversation.
These good friends are drinking. They will be going to the bathroom together soon to talk about lip gloss.
In our childlike innocence of wanting to be with our girlfriends in the bathroom, we put an intergalactic intention in place. “Please let me never be alone in this big room of tile and porcelain.”
Men, ironically, have had this figured out for a really long time. While they are typically slower on the uptake than us women, they really beat us to the punch on this one. Men, since childhood have been forced to go to the bathroom together, in overt, full disclosure. If women had to use urinals, we’d never leave the bathroom. We’d be talking about everything, pants down, sitting at the urinals, not a care in the world, sharing the latest story about reality TV. But our guy counterparts have always been all business, no conversation, no knowing glances across the half-divider, no verbal or non-verbal invitations to engage.
If this were our bathroom, we girls would never leave.
This strategy has built a strong foundation for bathroom privacy as a parent. Kids don’t open doors when dad is in the loo. Kids don’t yell questions through the locked door. Kids don’t act like they are being abused if their dad is unavailable for 10 minutes while doing their business.
Maybe, on some weird psychological level, moms feel comforted by their kids coming into the bathroom. It rings familiar and reminds us of great times with good friends. We’re used to it, so why not? I just hope I don’t start asking Gabe about my lip gloss.
Does Anyone Want to go with me to the Bathroom? was first posted on January 25, 2016 at 9:00 am.
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