Archived Column: 3/13/01

Bathroom Stall Time:

March 13, 2001

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A few students recently asked me why I haven't written anything about them, and I simply replied, "Unless you're here to fix the soda machine, I really don't care who you are or what you have to say." Wait, that's not right. Let's try that again...

A few students recently asked me why I haven't written anything about them, and I basically told them that not enough people would understand such an esoteric column. It would be like eating oatmeal without knowing the significance of Wilford Brimley. However, I have just decided to put my thoughts together this week in regards to high school bathroom patterns, in my endless quest to figure out these patterns and transform them into something useful, such as a quilt. If I am wrong, please correct my theories before I try to get them turned into laws. Cole's on the line right now...

One thing I know for sure is that people go many places these days: parks, car dealerships, bathrooms and the like. In today's society, these very people come from the parks and tell people what they saw, what they did, and perhaps -- if there was some sort of dunking booth involved -- what they accomplished. Car dealerships, too, provide people with much to talk about. The prices, the service and the dusty vending machine are just the tip of the iceberg. Bathrooms, though, aren't the tip of anything. The only tip one can give, in fact, is to go in there and get it over with. The faster you're out, the faster you can move on with the rest of your life. Such a concept also applies to dentists' offices, but we won't get into that now, because that would be getting far too off-topic. So, how 'bout those Sixers, huh?

Staying in the bathroom for as little time as possible is apparently not the case with school bathrooms, or not for girls anyway. To most boys, the bathroom is a room similar to the one at home, except the school trades a bathtub for a row of urinals and a roll of paper towels. Such a change, of course, provides a reason why children mistake the bathtub for some other device not found in a home bathroom, but such a blooper is not relevant to high school boys. They go and then they go, with the first "go" implying something much different, and much more important, than the second one. In clarifying the previous sentence, I will note that the first "go" is synonymous with the major reason for the existence of bathrooms, while the second "go" is synonymous with the reason we have exit signs. In clarifying the first sentence of the first paragraph, someone really should be fixing a soda machine right now; so if you are that person, I really don't care who you are or what you have to say...

Let's get back to the whole "go" theory. I think that when it comes to the girls, they don't just go -- they have an experience. As high school girls are "experiencing" certain things that guys are not, it is difficult to deny them the opportunity to leave the classroom. Such permission is especially hard for male teachers to deny because we don't have these experiences and that means we're not supposed to truly understand them. To deny the experience only accentuates that notion, and it becomes an endless struggle that not even Rocky could win. Or Bullwinkle. Definitely not Bullwinkle...

Still, it's not the bathroom permission that is intriguing. It's what happens afterwards. When guys come back, that's the end of it -- they sit down and do whatever it was they were doing before they left. With a girl, there's always something that must have happened since her last appearance in the seat because there's always so much to share with whoever is sitting next to her. But what is it exactly? I've been going to the bathroom for over 23 years, and I don't have a single story to tell (or at least not since I've been potty-trained). Either I've been doing it wrong all this time, or I just don't pay enough attention to anything that's occurred...

And it's not just that these girls have stories to tell; they're usually tragic or funny stories. Certainly, not much humor can come from a room with a few sinks and a trash can. The water is no different in there than anywhere else in the school, and such a liquid was never funny to begin with regardless. If the paint in their bathrooms is red instead of blue, that could be a cause for the humor. Then again, blood is red and that's not funny. Well, not usually. We'll just have to cough up the laughs, then, to the "experiences" that guys don't have. Our loss; I accept that...

But what about all the tragedies that occur? How can a girl come back from the bathroom and find out she's been dumped by her boyfriend, failed the math test she took yesterday and probably won't start in the soccer game after school? Are there news racks next to these stalls, or is the bathroom a place where people remember things they should have remembered before they left the classroom to begin with? This could be the reason why guys bring newspapers into the bathroom with them, while most girls do not. Girls apparently get their news by some other means, and such a means is not an option for guys, who merely go and then go. Repetition: what a bummer...

I've come to no definite conclusions about whatever is happening in the bathrooms for the girls. Most teachers would agree that girls ask to go to the bathroom more than twice as much as boys, and that girls also take twice as long. That, I guess, works out to four times the chance that something interesting is bound to happen somewhere between the exit of the classroom, the entrance to the bathroom, and then back again. I'll just have to drink more fluids and suggest that my male students do the same...

But I digress.