I was in a stall in the movie theater bathroom when a woman came in with her child.
“Don’t touch that. Here’s some paper. Don’t sit on the actual toilet. I’ll be in the next stall.”
This always makes me feel very self-conscious. Some day I will have to try peeing in the hover position. I know no one could have a bowel movement from the hover position. Those people don’t poop anywhere but home, I’m sure.
Anyway, out of us three I finished first. I washed my hands for a good sixty seconds, because I knew the mother in the stall was judging me. Then I actually dried off with the blower. I had fun watching the g-forces ripple my hand skin.
Then I turned and noticed the little girl was out and staring at me.
Then she made a little wave.
I waved back. I reminded myself that little girls who can’t touch anything also can’t talk to strangers, so I said nothing.
Then – she came over and hugged me! I swear, I did nothing to provoke it. I don’t know if she wanted to break the awkwardness of standing in the bathroom with a stranger she couldn’t talk to, or if she was being a little rebel, as if to say, “What’s that, Mom, don’t touch anything? I’m touching this dirty woman! Who knows where she’s been!”
Then Mom burst out of her stall with, “DON’T GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT ME,” I suppose because the child had spent a moment without an order, so I left. But it was sweet.
5 responses to “Little Girl”
Awww. Yay for non-creepy hugs!
I do not know how someone below normal height (any child under 12, at least) could possibly hover over most public toilets, though. Maybe they use the paper thingies so as to not directly touch the toilet? (I sort of figure: germ transfer from my outer buttocks/thighs to anywhere those germs could do harm: not very likely; and germs on other peoples’ outer thighs: also not very likely, so I just sit and call it a day. (but I do avoid touching anything with my hands that’s possible to avoid, especially after washing my hands)(I use my sleeve or a paper towel [if things are lined up well for that in the bathroom] or the waist hem of my shirt to open the door; I am a weirdo, yes, but my cranky immune system is not to be trifled with.)
But yes. Awkward.
KC – I have recently begun doing the foot-flush.
Most of the public toilets I encounter are auto-flush, but I am immediately washing my hands, so eh. If I am unsure about the availability of soap-I’m-not-allergic-to and hot water, though I’ll usually go for an elbow flush or a hand-flush using a square of toilet paper tossed into the flush early, partly because if I were the next person to use it, I’d rather not touch a toilet handle that someones’s just-on-the-public-bathroom-floor shoes were on, in general. But with a “special” immune system, you do what you gotta do, and foot flushes work! (everyone else is washing their hands after flushing, one hopes, so it should be fine.)
KC – I never thought about my shoe-germs and the next guy. But to make up for it, I always go in to the stalls that people back out of because the last person didn’t flush. And I flush them.
Now that’s being a Good Bathroom Citizen!!! I had an incident as a child where the toilet in someone’s house (someone I had never met before! and I was a very shy kid in most ways) backed up on me, so now if I see an unflushed toilet, the possibility remains in my head that it may be Unflushed For A Reason and therefore I leave it strictly alone because I am a chicken.
The shoe-germs thing mostly occurred to me because the grossest of rest area bathrooms (where I am most likely to want to not touch the handle) are sometimes *wet* on the floor and euuugh transferring whatever-that-is to the handle: nope.