A few days ago I was at a pizza parlor with my family plowing through a
large, extra-cheesy, thin-crust sausage pizza. Suddenly my 3 year old
daughter Autumn announced that she had to go pottie. I said I would take
her since my wife Nadia was busy trying to get our 1 year old son Jack to eat
something…anything. The kid hates eating and just wants to run
around all the time. So I followed my daughter through the maze of tables
back to where the bathrooms were. I tried the men’s handle. It was
unlocked so we walk in and Autumn runs over to the toilet ready to pounce on
it. “WAIT!” I yelled out in horror. “Don’t touch anything!”
It was a nasty, disgusting mess. The seat was up, there was pee all
over everything, and it looked like it had not been flushed since the Clinton
administration. Autumn is still oblivious to the notion of what is ‘gross’
or not. If I had not stopped her she would have run right over and
plopped her little bottom down on that wretched and defiled throne of filth.
I quickly ushered her out of that hellhole and decided to try the
women’s room. Chicks have to sit down so it just had to be better
than the men’s toilet that had been ruined by the pigs next door. I
gingerly tried the handle. It was open, so I took a quick glance around
and jumped in the room with Autumn. Sure enough the seat was down and dry
and I hoisted her up and let her do her thing. Then came a knock on the
door. “Just a minute!” I said in a high girly voice, hoping the
lady would go away. After washing Autumn up I cautiously opened the door and
peeked out. Yep, the middle-aged woman was still standing there and she
give me a surprised look that turned into a nasty look, which then turned into
a somewhat understanding look when she saw Autumn at my feet. I gave her
a raised-eyebrow shrug and squeezed past her in the tiny bathroom/hallway out
into the freedom of the pizza parlor. This brief encounter in the women’s
room then got me thinking about all of the other times I have been in a women’s
room for one reason or another.
Not including all the times as a humiliated young boy
when my mom would drag me into public bathrooms with her to keep me safe from
the evils of men’s rooms, my earliest trip into the ladies room was at 4H camp
in the Wisconsin Dells when I was about 13 years old. I was just entering
the wondrous and confusing world of puberty. I did not know how to make
out with a girl, but I knew I really wanted to. Luckily for me there was
a pretty, and already well endowed girl there named Kelly Waldorf who was my
age and seemed like she was into me. Our first night there all of the
grownups were hanging out around the main campfire so me and Kelly and the rest
of the kids decided to play ‘Truth Or Dare’. You know the
game…where you go around the circle and take turns asking someone: “Truth
or dare?”. But where should we play? We decided the girl’s camp
bathroom/shower was large enough to hold all 10 of us and would work just
fine. After getting a few inevitable but informative ‘truths’ out of the
way (“Do you think so-and-so is cute?”, etc…), we eventually got around to the
much funner ‘dares’ (“I dare you to kiss so-and-so for 15 seconds.”) This
is the greatest game ever in the history of the world I thought! I got to
kiss one girl who was a couple of years younger than me, but what I really
wanted was to kiss Kelly.
Finally it happened and the two of us were ‘dared’ to
kiss for 20 seconds! We stood up and I leaned in with my lips pursed,
clueless, and then a wonderful strange thing happened…she stuck her tongue in
my mouth! Instant pubescent boner. I stuck my butt out so our
middle parts weren’t touching anymore, but it was apparent through my shorts
and I was sure she had felt it…but she kept on kissing me! I struck back
with my tongue in earnest. I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt
good and it felt right and I was in heaven. Right in the middle of a kissing
session with Kelly though an older lady walked in. Total buzz kill. The first thing she saw was Kelly and I with
our tongues down each other’s throats and she let out a gasp and started
yelling at us…all of us…telling us to get the hell out of the women’s
room. I started to run out but she grabbed my arm and led me back to
where the parents were and promptly reported me to Kelly’s dad and told him
exactly what she had seen. He gave me a stern look, but in the end the
parents nervously laughed it off. Kids making out in the girl’s
bathroom…somewhat troubling but not the end of the world. I was kept away
from Kelly though and there was no more kissing to be had on that trip.
Totally sucked, but to this day it was still one of the greatest, most thrilling
nights of my life…French kissing a real girl for the first time.
Another incident I had in a girl’s bathroom was in the
mid-90’s when I was working at WPS Insurance in Madison, WI. It was a
crappy place to work, but it is where I had met many of my lifelong friends including
Mitch Manson, Brad & Erin Pronger, Daddy, Bonnie & Clyde, Derrick and
Charlotte Goetz, Glenn Kampson, and Lauren Hatch. One day Charlotte and I
were talking in the hallway, heading back to our workspace, and as we passed
the women’s room Charlotte interrupted our conversation to announce that she
had to step in for a minute. I wanted to finish what I was saying so I
said “Fine” and stepped into the bathroom with her, in plain view of the 20 or
30 people manning the phones in our work station. She looked at me funny
but we continued the conversation for about a minute until one of the VP’s of
the company happened to walk in. She looked at me. She looked at
Charlotte. She frowned. I mumbled some unintelligible apology and
ran out of there. From his seat about 20 feet away Mitch was laughing his
ass off as I headed for my desk. About 5 minutes later I was called into
the ‘Office’ with the VP and a Union Rep for an interrogation. In the few
years that I had worked at this place I had gotten into so much trouble that
this was the very least of my infractions, but they wanted to know why I was in
there and if I understood that it was wrong. I had no idea why I
went in there with Charlotte, but yes I understood that it was wrong so I let
them scold me for awhile and I promised that I would never ever do it again and they let me go.
But it happened again. About 6 or 7 years ago I
went to see a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game with Ernie Hagen at the
Target Center in downtown Minneapolis. We both have season tickets.
Ernie’s tickets are kickass courtside seats that cost a fortune whereas my
tickets are crappy upper-deck seats that cost next to nothing…they are
basically just to get me in the arena. Ernie’s dad was using Ernie’s
tickets that night so we were in the upper deck using my tickets. Ernie
was not impressed with the view. After about 10 minutes he announced that
he needed to get high, so we went out in the hallway to find a place. The
Wolves were not doing very well that year so there was hardly anyone in the
upper deck. We went in to the nearest bathroom and Ernie told me to keep
watch while he took a couple of hits off his pinch-hitter.
There was no-one in the bathroom. Ernie selected
the end stall farthest away from the door to toke up in. I don’t smoke
weed anymore so I was standing along the row of stalls with nothing to do so I
decided to take a leak. I turned around to pee in a urinal…but…there
wasn’t any. What the f*ck? It was a large bathroom and I thought maybe
they were tucked around a corner or something so I looked left,
right…nothing. No urinals. This was the stupidest men’s room I have
ever been in I thought. Just then someone walked in so I turned towards
Ernie’s stall and gave him the old “cough, cough” signal for him to be
cool. Then I turned to look at the intruder and…it was a chick!
Oops, she must have accidentally came in the wrong bathroom. I felt sorry
for her so I smiled and gave her that unspoken tilted-head nod that says: “Ah well, mistakes happen.” But she
didn’t blush and turn around and run out. No. She just stood there
staring at me with this weird look on her face. She was glued to her
spot, unwilling to advance but not retreating. I stood there, waiting for
her to leave, extremely confused by her demeanor.
Suddenly the light bulb went on. This wasn’t the
stupidest men’s room in the world. We were the stupidest men in
the world because this was a women’s room! Duhh. That’s why
there were no urinals and that’s why this lady didn’t leave after seeing me in
there. I quickly ran over to Ernie’s stall and in a hurried hushed voice
I said: “Ernie! We have to go! We’re in the women’s
room!” “What?!” “Yeah, c’mon! Let’s go!”
Ernie put away his stash in record time, popped his head out, looked
around in embarrassment, and then we ran out of there mumbling “Sorry.” as we
scooted past the chick.
From smoking weed a few years ago at the Target Center
to getting my first French kiss way back when I was 13 years old at 4H camp to,
I have had some good times in the women’s room. No lessons to be learned
here…just have fun out there and keep your head up. You never know when
you might find yourself in the wrong bathroom at the right time.
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