You must choose wisely...

I never thought public bathrooms would be a source of stress for me anymore…

Sure, when you’re 5 and you jump out of the town pool and run to the bathroom to take care of business (after all, this is the “ool” area… there’s no “p” in it, and they’d like to keep it that way thank you very much) only to find that the string on your bathing suit has knotted up so bad you think they’re going to have to use the jaws of life to set you free, and you’re standing up against the corner of the stall trying to keep the door from unlatching… and now you’ve really got to go… I mean you’ve REALLY got to go… and the sweat starts beading down your puffy little flushed cheeks ‘cause you’re beginning to think about the ramifications of not being able to get your suit off in time (even though at age five you have absolutely no idea what the word “ramifications” means)… so you start pulling, and twisting and tugging… to no avail of course (not that you know what “avail” means either)… and as a result of your efforts, you’re really only managing to make the knot tighter… but in doing so you discover that the waist has at least gotten slightly stretched, so you try to shimmy out of the suit altogether, thinking that might provide you with the relief you need (and at age 5 who really understands the advanced principles and physics of the bonds that exist between bathing suits and wet skin)… and this involves even more twisting and pulling and tugging… and eventually you find yourself making way more noise than is acceptable for a public restroom… flopping around in a stall with your bathing suit stuck halfway down your butt… absolutely no circulation getting to your thighs… trying carefully to maneuver over to the toilet to see if there’s anyway you can make this work… and then the door swings open…

Sure, that’s acceptable at age 5… even humorous in retrospect (after years of intense therapy)… but at age 31, you’re not supposed to suffer indignities like that anymore (and if you did, they’d probably phone the authorities)

But, as I have discovered, there’s still at least one way for a public bathroom to make a grown man feel like a 5 year old with his bathing suit wedged in his neither regions…

It seems to be a trend in the restaurant industry nowadays to label the restrooms in accordance with whatever type of food happens to be served there. Go to a western steakhouse, and you’re sure to find doors labeled “cowboys” and cowgirls” …go to a Mexican restaurant, and they’re likely to be marked “Seniors” and “Senioritas” (a distinction that, oddly enough, becomes progressively harder to make with each ingested margarita)…

When you first thionk about it, this might not seem like a big deal. It may appear to simply be a cute way to acknowledge and exploit the culture of your cuisine. But as you move into less and less familiar culinary territory, the decision of which door to choose (feel free to insert your own “lady or the tiger” parables here) becomes exponentially harder… and the ramifications of making the wrong decision (at 31, I DO know what that means) carry a much weightier impact (unless of course there’s a woman in the restroom who can be easily bribed to stay quiet). I'm not saying it's always a challenge… I mean, it’s easy to go to an Indian restaurant… who can’t tell the difference between a “brave” and a “squaw” right?

But when you’re sitting in a quaint little bistro that just happens to serve specialties from the island of “Koonga” (and no, not THAT Koonga… the other one) and you start to, you know… get the itch… and you find yourself staring at doors marked “gnohic” and “durkad” …which are YOU going to choose?

Exactly.

Well now you know how I felt as I stood outside a pair of doors in a small restaurant in Germany a couple years ago… I can’t remember what words were actually written on them… all I know is, it was nothing as simple as “Mann” and “Frau”

I must have stared at those two doors for a full minute before taking the plunge. And to be honest, I can’t really tell you if I made the right choice… urinals don’t seem to be quite as pervasive in Europe as they are be in the U.S., so I’m not sure how you tell if it’s a men’s room or not… the entire time I was in there, all I could envision was the sight of some large woman with too many consonants in her name bursting through the door, discovering my misjudgement, and shrieking, only to be quickly followed by her father and three brothers, each larger than the next, carrying some form of pike, pitchfork, or spear, and demanding (in a language I didn’t understand) that I make amends for offending the honor of some other guy named Gunter.

I have an odd imagination…

Anyway, when I had finished my activities, I scurried back upstairs (yes, I washed my hands) and relayed the story of my predicament (and it’s associated conundrum) to my 2 companions…

both of whom promptly laughed at me.

Hey, all I'm asking is this… if you ever find yourself standing outside the restroom doors of a restaurant, and you happen to see a confused, disheveled man staring at the entrances with a blank look upon his face… please point him in the right direction… he’s probably just having bathing suit flashbacks.