It was a dark and stormy night … well, actually it was a humid and sunny afternoon … but it doesn’t really matter, because the foreboding inner feeling was the same.
I was in a shopping mall, doing a little shopping for a few little trinkets to bring home to my kids (okay, trinkets might be the wrong word … it just has connotations of a grandmother who is obsessive compulsive about little ornaments and ‘do-dads’, and her house is littered with them … providing ample opportunity to spend hours each week dusting, polishing and moving from place to place … but, I digress), when, all of a sudden I got an urge to pee (and, anyone who has given birth knows that an urge like that only means one thing … making it to the bathroom on time is like living with a ticking time bomb … never knowing just when, or how cataclysmic the explosion might be).
As I visually sought out those classic symbols of the restroom … the next step up from stick people, one 
wearing pants, and the other a dress, I fought to not allow my fear of the unknown get to me. I needed to maintain my composure and dignity, and not go off running through the mall like a maniac, yelling ‘I gotta pee, where do I go to go?’
And there they were, the mr. and the ms. (I wanted to say mrs., but thought that might not be politically correct … although I am not sure that singling out women by a dress or skirt is very politically correct), hanging from a sign on the ceiling, like a beacon from a lighthouse, as the waves of … well as the waves were quickly surrounding me. But, my agony would not be relieved as soon as one might think.
Sure enough, finding the sought-after sign was not the end of my urgent problem, but the beginning of a new one.
As with many times in the past, I was in a public place and had to walk past the mens washroom, down a maze-like corridor with twists and turns (and often burnt out light bulbs) just to relieve my post-pregnancy bladder. As I make the turns I am sure that I will leave more that just a carbon footprint. I am also sure that there will be some pervert lurking around the next dark corner.
Have you ever noticed the locations of men’s restrooms and women’s rest rooms in public places? It has been my finding (after a lifetime of active, full-bladdered research) that, almost exclusively, womens restrooms are a further walk than the mens rest rooms.
What exactly are the designers and builders of these fine establishments thinking? There is a part of me that whispers every time this happens … ‘probably designed by a man.’ Whoever it is that is doing the designing and creating of public restrooms, needs to start doing the designs while their bladder is full … so that they can design from a position of need.
And speaking of sitting down on the job, really is there anything on this Earth that can provide as much instant pleasure and relief, like emptying your bladder? And really, this is why bathrooms are poorly designed … because the act of emptying ones bladder is so wonderful that, when it is over, the trail that led there is forgotten, until the next time that it strikes again.
itsawonderfilledlife 