All parents know the importance of teaching their children good bathroom etiquette: flushing properly, washing their hands, not making a mess, etc. However, there is another sort of bathroom etiquette parents should teach their children, particularly now that summer road trip season is nearly upon us; and that is being as quick as possible.
Last week my husband and I had occasion to drive to Prince George to see our son, and at about 2:30 p.m. we arrived in Williams Lake, in need of gas, water, and a bathroom. We stopped at an establishment that promised all three, and after gassing up I went to use the facilities.
There were two washrooms—one for men, one for women—each taking a single occupant at a time. There were three people ahead of me in the queue for the ladies: two girls aged about eight and 10, with the bored and vaguely sullen looks of people who have been waiting for some time, and a woman who appeared to be their mother. I settled in to wait, as I was in no real hurry; which turned out to be just as well.
The seconds ticked by, and turned into minutes. The woman held the key to the ladies bathroom, so I surmised that the occupant was another child, who was perhaps taking advantage of some quiet time away from her siblings to practice meditation. Still, she was taking rather a long time, and eventually the woman glanced at me and then knocked timidly on the door.
A small voice piped out “Who’s that?” The woman replied “Your mother”; but rather than add something helpful and prompting, along the lines of “Are you okay?” or “Do you need help?” or “Hurry up, there are others waiting”, she subsided into silence.
The wait continued. Presumably the girl had finished meditating and was now on to another endeavour, such as fashioning origami swans out of paper towels. Then a small boy, who had been moving items in the shop from their rightful places to other random locations, and pressing his face against the doors of refrigerated cabinets, approached. The woman asked if he needed the bathroom, and when he said yes she produced the key to the men’s bathroom and let him in.
The boy was out in a commendably short period of time. The mother glanced at me again, then asked the girls if either of them would like to use the men’s bathroom. They both reacted as if she had asked them if they wanted to eat a slug, and the woman shrugged.
I wanted to get to Prince George before dark; and I have also, over the course of a lifetime, used single-user men’s washrooms from coast to coast, if the alternative is dying of old age while waiting for the women’s washroom to come available. I therefore seized my opportunity, and in my most polite voice said “If none of you object, I’ll use the men’s bathroom.”
None of them did. As I came out, I noted that the two girls were in the same positions they had been in when I arrived. For all I know, they are still there.
So the lesson is this: parents, please let your children know that public bathrooms are just that—public—and not a space for them to occupy indefinitely. Those behind you in the queue will thank you (or use the other bathroom).