Death Awaiting in Public Restrooms

“You are going to get sick. Maybe even die,” The voice in my head said. The voice oddly sounded like my Mother’s. To clarify, she has been drinking vodka tonics up in heaven for a few years. I also think she is trying to get St. Peter’s job of letting people through the pearly gates.
Let me start at the beginning. I was out running errands. As I was leaving the first store with my cart full of purchases, I tried to avert my eyes as I passed the restroom. I do this because, at my age, seeing the words restroom, bathroom, or powder room awakens my bladder to perform.
I glanced and saw the word restroom. My brain betrayed me and alerted my bladder that I was passing an opportunity for it to the second half of its job. The first job of the bladder is to hold the urine. The second is to gush the urine out of the body with the same force of Niagra Falls.
The minute my bladder received this information, I was doing the piddle dance. Seconds before, I didn’t even need to use the restroom. But here I was ditching my cart full of paid purchases and bolting to the door with WOMEN plaster across it.
As I grabbed the handle to pull open the door, I saw it. A sticker. It showed slipping your hand through the handle and pulling the door open with your forearm. No germs! I do that when exiting a public restroom. Many people in public restrooms are allergic to washing their hands. But seeing that sticker started me wondering if I was too laid back in worrying about germs.
I made it to a stall. I noted that the toilet had been flushed. That just ticks me off when people don’t flush the toilet. Who wants to see someone else poo bobbing in the bowel? I let that thought go as my piddle dance had increased to a piddle jig, very intense, I might add.
It was then that I realized today I wore jeans. Jeans with a button and a zipper! I have only worn pants with drawstrings or elastic waistbands since COVID started. As I wrestle with undoing the button and zipper, I wish I had done more Kegal exercises.
I made it to the toilet. Horror filled me as I heard my Mother’s voice, “Never ever sit on a public toilet. You will get some kind of a disease and die. Things will turn green and fall off. Then you will die. It’s true, I read it in the Enquirer.”
I was sitting on a public toilet! Oh my God! Things are going to turn green and fall off! I will be a carrier of a new disease only spread by people who sit on public toilets. My bum is a Petri dish of death and destruction!
I panicked. Yes, I was already overreacting, but this is my blog. I grabbed my purse and found my hand sanitizer. I covered my tushie with the sticky gel. “Die Death Die!” I said out loud.
Luckily there was no one in the restroom to hear my chanting to death. It seems that people aren’t using public restrooms as much since Covid.
The gelatinous sanitizer wasn’t drying or rubbing in. I rummage through my purse and found tissues. They were thicker than the toilet paper, allowing me to ripe the excess off. I believe toilet paper you find in public restrooms are the casts off tissue paper that didn’t make the cut to be gift bag tissue paper. Very thin.
My Mother’s voice in my head said, “Aren’t you glad I always told you to carry tissues with you? Do you still have a twenty hidden in your wallet? Never know when you will need cash.”
I didn’t respond but pulled my jeans up button, zipped, and ran out of the stall to wash my hands.
The faucet and soap dispensers were motion-activated. I will save that fiasco for a later Blog.
I did go home and took a shower where I freely chanted Die Death Die. At this writing, nothing has turned green or fallen off.