I would prefer to never have to use a bathroom that wasn't mine, really.

There you go. I have family members that go to insane (and accident-risking) extremes to avoid using public bathrooms. I'm not that bad, but yeah, the pretense of not being around people I wouldn't let use my bathroom is very important to me.

In other news, part of my shiner is lighter than my current facial skin tone. It's very distracting when I catch a glimpse of my reflection (say, in the washroom), but now I understand the "that golden nugget under your eye" comment that was tossed at me yesterday.

My elementary school had a big, round, communal concrete sink in the boy's room. There was a bar around the base you stepped on, and metal mushroom shaped thing in the middle that spritzed water like a lawn sprinkler.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? In retrospect, it was verra strange.

Is that all that is, a sink? I'd never seen one, until last year, when Julia had her dance recital. I took her to the ladies room to change between numbers. The recital was held at Saugus High School. I just gazed at it in wonder.

...I think that women have it pretty good, bathroom-wise.

Urinals and the ability to pee standing up. That is all.

Is there no lock on the door?

Huh. You know what? I have no idea. I've actually mostly gotten her to stop doing it, so it's not a huge deal.

ION: Elmo Doesn't Speak Up on His Cellphone, Mom's Suit Alleges

Has Tickle Me Elmo been replaced by Bait-and-Switch Elmo?

Where most toys for preschoolers are designed to make a racket, Elmo's World Talking Cell Phone doesn't make enough noise, a Pasadena mom contends in a lawsuit.

She's accusing Mattel Inc. and subsidiary Fisher-Price, which sells toys based on Sesame Street characters, of rigging the phone so it is audible only when shoppers try it in the store.

....

Elmo is easily heard when the phone is in the box, according to the complaint filed on behalf of Elisabeth Marchetti, who bought the toy for her 18-month-old daughter, Ava, in February.

But when the toy is out of the box, the suit contends, Elmo speaks barely above a whisper, making children and parents as unhappy as Oscar the Grouch. Opening the box removes a plastic strip from the phone, resetting the volume.

Urinals and the ability to pee standing up. That is all.

Sorry, is that a pro or a con? I'm so okay with not having that common genitalia space, you don't even understand. How can I pretend I'm alone with a stranger's labia right there????

Also, I can pee standing up.

Huh.

I have no problem with talking in the bathroom, to people I came in with. To me, it helps increase the privacy, so I can pretend that the other people can't hear any other noises I might be making as well

Although many women will cop to envying the ability to pee standing up thing, it's surely not because of the urinals. The urinals are a drawback. No privacy, man. It is the potential ability to be circumspect, like say in the woods, or whatever, and not have to lower one's clothing quite so far, thereby exposing ourselves, that we envy.

I always love freaking out new male co-workers by telling them about the couch in the ladies room. They don't have one theirs. Between that, and the fancy lounges in department store ladies rooms, I think that women have it pretty good, bathroom-wise.

Yeah, there used to be a law in RI that at least one ladies room in every non-residential building had to have a cot or such like. Which often led to a lot of yelling first thing in the morning at the URI chemistry dept. when someone would stumble across a male graduate student sleeping in the staff ladies room.

Elmo Doesn't Speak Up on His Cellphone, Mom's Suit Alleges

That sounds like a case for Tommy Hotcrotch!