Bathroom Meditation

Here’s a little known fact about me – I almost always wait until the last moment to use the restroom, especially at work! I don't know why I do this. It's something I don't notice at first, but I will reposition myself in my seat, wiggle and squirm until finally I reach the point where it becomes questionable whether I will make it to the restroom in time. Then I rush to the drawer where we keep our bathroom key, scurry down the hall, through three heavy fire-safe doors, and shove my key into the bathroom lock.

Now there are three stalls in our bathroom:

1) The handicapped accessible stall with the door that must be locked by pulling it closed from the bottom with one hand while turning the lock with the other.

2) The middle stall that I avoid entirely because it always has tissue remaining in the toilet. I like to live in a delusion where I am the only one to use a stall, and tissue is evidence of previous occupants.

3) The stall with the door that naturally hangs in the closed position.

Normally I would use the handicap stall. After all, a closed stall door usually means there is a person or, worse, a “present” inside. And we have already gone over why the middle stall is not an option. This would leave the handicap restroom, but if there is anywhere it is completely rude to use a wheelchair accessible stall when I do not utilize a wheelchair, it is at my work (right up there with the special Olympics). Being inconsiderate of people with disabilities – talk about a good way to get a bad name around our office.

This is because I work for a non-profit agency that helps people with all kinds of disabilities. In the back of our building is a huge room where a “Day Program” is held for people who are severely handicapped – many needing assistance with every daily function imaginable.

While many of the Day Program consumers (yes, we call them “consumers”… I don’t know why, but people find that odd) require changing in a private area in the back, some are able to use our facility’s rest room. On several occasions I have watched a mobility aid hoist a woman out from a wheelchair to a bathroom stall, and then wait patiently until it is time to help her back in. There are also consumers who share our rest room that are not incredibly disabled physically, but have mental impairments.

The department I work in is down a long hall, three fire-safe doors away. Although I do not visit the back room often, I do walk down this hallway in order to use the restroom. Of course I never take this distance into consideration while I’m doing “the pee-pee dance” around my office. So when it’s time to go, I go – quickly.

I walk into the bathroom and switch on the lights. With two of the three stalls being off limits, I am left with no other choice but to chance it with the closed stall. I rush, my bladder threatening to let go with each step. Yet as I walk across the dingy tile floor there is a moment of hesitation, and a strange worry always pops into my head:

What if someone forgot one of our consumers in the bathroom…?

I love to analyze things – it’s what makes me a difficult girlfriend but a halfway decent writer – so as I sit there, “doing my business”, I create a little scenario in my mind that, I believe, explains how such a situation could possibly occur.

Lets say a mobility aid is helping a consumer make the transition from her chair to “the chair”. Another consumer with, perhaps, a seizure disorder is in the stall with the perpetually shut door. There is some difficulty with the consumer in the wheelchair accessible stall that requires the mobility aid’s full attention, and temporarily the other consumer is forgotten. Normally the woman in the third stall, being physically capable of using the facilities on her own, would come out from the stall, wash her hands, and exit with no assistance. However, this time she has a seizure, but does not fall from her seat. The mobility aid, being focused on the situation with the consumer in the wheelchair, forgets temporarily about the other woman. As the mobility aid helps return the consumer to her seat and then out the rest room door, she assumes the other consumer (who is helplessly stuck in the third stall, and unable to communicate) has already left. The aid shuts off the light and closes the door behind her. The consumer is now sitting alone in the dark. I walk in minutes/hours later, flip on the lights, open up the stall door, and discover the consumer sitting on the toilet, unconscious.

As I’m pondering on this hypothetical situation, my first reaction is, “Wow, that would be freaky. But at least they would be discovered, and helped.”

But then I start thinking about it more. Here comes me, rushing into the bathroom with an overfilled bladder. I open the door, ready to dash inside, and instead find an unconscious consumer with her pants down. What is the likelihood, at this point, that I would NOT urinate all over myself?

At this realization, the next thought to instantly pop into my mind is a silly solution: Instead of walking directly to the third stall, from now on I should quickly use a different stall first, then check for the consumer afterwards (of course at this point in my analysis the idea of ever leaving the bathroom without checking the closed stall for comatose consumers is no longer an option).

I am surprised by this response. If I were to put off a potentially serious situation in order to avoid embarrassment, it would be incredibly selfish of me. I spent the rest of my ladies’ room experience and my walk back to the office taking an inventory of my values and priorities. I could possibly rationalize with something like, “It was just a pretend scenario that you made up,” or, “Even if it really did happen like that, another minute wouldn’t hurt them.”

But I don’t want even a small part of me to think it’s okay to let someone suffer for one minute, particularly someone who I have promised as part of my work to look after the best interests of, just because I want to save face (and my pants).

So now when I enter the rest room, whether in a hurry or in leisurely fashion, I always open the door cautiously and prepare myself (particularly my bladder) to be startled. Will I be urinating today, or saving someone’s life (or both)? All I know is that I’d feel a lot better about myself with wet pants then with clean ones, if it meant that I had helped someone in a scary situation.


Questions to think about: Are there people or situations you avoid in order to avoid embarrassment? What does your vanity cost you? What does it cost others?