Toilet Manners

The one downside to freelance writing full time: you can’t always control your environment. I’m over working at a downtown Mesa coffee shop because the wifi at my house is on the fritz; no big deal. I’m sitting in a quiet nook when a family with about seven kids, all under ten years of age (not kidding), came in the coffee house. Not a big deal. Except you could have sworn this was their first public outing ever, that they were high on sugar, and the little house-converted-into-coffeehouse establishment was, indeed, Disneyland. 

My headache probably didn’t help matters, but I was grinding my teeth a bit at the tykes jumping up and down, and even remained calm when one fell on my laptop cord (which was next to the wall) and almost yanked my laptop off the table. 

Following this, two of the children had to use the restroom, which is in the same little nook (read: non air-circulating nook) that I am in. When they left, there was an unearthly … odor … emitting from the restroom. I get up to close the door. I notice they didn’t flush. I ask the mother, who is publically wearing a Winnie the Pooh nightgown, if she can have her children flush the toilet. I am not mean in this, but firm. The mother looks at me with a smile and says, I kid you not: 

“Oh, we teach our children not to touch the handles in the public restrooms, they contain germs.” 

Me: “They could use their foot.” 

Her: “But then the germs are on the shoe and they track the potty germs into the house. No one likes potty germs in the house.” 

Me: “No one likes smelling your children’s pooh [editor's note, I did really say 'pooh'] emitting from the restroom.” 

Her: “It’s just part of the nasty germs of a public potty!”

At this point I walked away, flushed the toilet, closed the door, and sat down. I have no hope left for the world.