Bathroom Bitching

I promise this isn’t really TMI, but I’m gonna talk about the politics of bathroom stalls. And a personality defect of mine, it turns out.

I’m getting weaker; even if DocGos says she doesn’t notice any difference. When we first met, I used to be able to walk up the stairs with two hands full. Now I can’t; I have to have one hand free for the rail, and on no-spoon days I need both. When we first met, I could stand up on my own from sitting in a chair. I really can’t anymore.

Which means I need the handicapped stall now – I need the bars. Well, it’s like the cane – I could probably manage without? For awhile longer? But it’s so much easier with, and why make my life harder just to prove to myself that I can, that I’m still an independent woman who don’t need no man. erm. Bars. Yes. Bars. That’s what I was talking about.

And because I need the bars, I am trying really really hard to not be bitchy about it when someone who clearly does NOT need that stall is in it.

Okay – confession. I have *always* gotten a bit internally bitchy about people using the stalls when they don’t need to. It’s a serious character flaw of mine – I get bent out of shape when people don’t follow The Rules. I get irritated when someone cuts someone else off in traffic. Even if the person cut-off doesn’t even notice. I get irritated when people cut in line, even if I’m not in that line. I get mad when people at work leave their dishes in the bathroom when the stinkin’ break room is LITERALLY ten feet away. I get SO MAD when people don’t break down their fucking cardboard boxes and just leave them in the hallway. It’s because I tend to get really mad on behalf of other people, whether they even realize they’ve been wronged or not. By cutting that guy off, by sneaking in line, by not taking your dishes in, by not breaking down your cardboard and putting it in the recycle area, you are making someone else’s life more difficult because you are a selfish ASSHOLE. Even if it’s just a minor inconvenience, there was still no need for that inconvenience to exist, you just created it because you are a LAZY SELFISH DICK. And so I get mad. Because you are not following The Rules.

…Bitch.

ANYWAY. At work, we have a huge wheelchair stall, and the normal sized one next to it has bars, so it’s awesome and I use that one, because I don’t need the space, just the help up. But consistently – CONSISTENTLY – the wheelchair stall is taken up. By tiny, tiny women. Like, a regular stall would feel large to them, WHY do they need the extra extra space? It’s always been a phenomenon that made me scratch my head, but there’s actually been a couple of times that it’s made me wait. And I try not to get irritated, but seriously.

YOU ARE FIVE FEET TALL AND 80 POUNDS SOAKING WET WHY DO YOU NEED A TEN SQUARE FOOT BATHROOM STALL.

Answer: YOU DON’T.

So when I go in there, and both stalls are taken, I have a choice between using one of the other ones, and then using the freakin’ toilet paper dispenser to pull myself up and hope to GOD it doesn’t come off the wall, or wait. And if I don’t have my cane with me at the moment, then they look at me weird for waiting. But if I DO have my cane, sometimes they have the good grace to look abashed. Usually not – they’re oblivious, because people at my work are very self-involved. See: previous posts about trying to not get knocked the fuck over in the cafe and halls because they’re not paying attention.

I wonder if, when I’m in a chair, I’ll be any more irritated. Maybe I’ll do the passive aggressive thing and put a note on the door: “THERE IS SOMEONE IN THIS BUILDING WHO ACTUALLY NEEDS THIS STALL – DO YOU?!”

In Comic Sans, natch.

Realistically, I probably won’t. I’m really good at ignoring those breaking The Rules when it’s me getting shafted. Though, I did get really irritated this weekend about it – I went to Bingo at an American Legion lodge (looong story) and wound up waiting for ten minutes for the one handicapped stall. The other two were simply too wide, I wouldn’t have been able to brace myself on the walls to stand, they were just too far apart. There was a line, and I as time went by I started to say kinda loudly every time someone asked if I was in line, “Go ahead, I have to wait for the handicapped stall, I need the bars.”

Man, I dunno WHAT she was doing in there. She took her shoes off at one point. I thought she was changing her clothes, but she came out with nothing but herself. And flushed a HOJILLION times and used up most of the toilet paper. I just…man. Yeah. She was old, there’s all kinds of stuff happening there that I don’t even know. Probably best that I don’t know. I just know I had to wait ten minutes to pee and she totally could have used the other stalls.

This is all the beginning of the inconvenience, the social stage of decline, and it will be really interesting to see how I adapt to it when it gets worse. Maybe I really WILL become the Bathroom Stall Avenger. Maybe I’ll just pull an Elsa and let it go. It will be telling, either way. Just as I’m discovering the true character of those around me, I’m discovering what I’m made of, too. I have kindness and patience I didn’t know I possessed, and intolerances I didn’t know I had in me.

I’m building my character even as my body unbuilds itself.