Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Public Restrooms

I hate using public restrooms, and have very careful and elaborate techniques to avoid touching anything in one. You just never know what disease-ridden person has been in there before you! Today I was faced with a real trial. I took the girls to Burger King to play on the playground. I’m sitting on the bench, eating fries, and watching them enjoy themselves, when Sophie strikes fear into my heart by exclaiming, “Me go pee-pee.” I asked her to repeat herself, hoping I had heard wrong. Nope. Horrors. What to do? Recently, I had to take her to the restroom at the public library, but I’m classicist enough to say that I think the general clientele of a library is cleaner than that of a fast food restaurant. Plus, it was just the two of us. This time I have Kate with me! Toddling-touching-everything-not-listening-to-one-word-that-Mommy-says-Kate.

However, I had no real choice so I picked up Kate and hustled Sophie on down to the bathroom. I briefly considered asking a stranger to watch Kate for me, but decided against it for obvious reasons. Fortunately it looked reasonably clean inside. Sophie promptly puts her hands on the toilet seat. Kate explores, but mostly just touched the walls (I’m sure they have never been cleaned – I worked at McDonald’s when I was a teenager, and I know how these places function). Sophie is so small I have to hold her on the seat, and her clothes touch it! Aaagghhh. Skipping to the end of this painful tale, it has now been three hours since then, and none of us show any signs of disease yet. So I guess we will all survive!

1 comment:

Bookworm said...

I'm a big believer in those little bottles of disinfectant. That same disinfectant is mounted in pump containers at hospitals and animal shelters and is, apparently, amazingly effective at killing the bad germs. With a little person, you want to rub it on and make sure her little hands are completely dry before you release her and, of course, you want to store the stuff like the poison it is.