Apparently, I liked this blog so much, it had been reincarnated a few times, so bear with me if you’ve read it before. Read it again if you like because in order to make it available, I had to copy it from a Note Pad file and then remove all the line break quotation marks and old HTML formatting script. But really, it was no trouble. I’ve also included a few new notations [in brackets like this]. I also did some minor tweaking of the original to satisfy my English students who might complain about my habit of switching to second person, something I constantly tell them NOT to do.
Originally Re-posted on 1/7/2010 with the title “Retro Thursdays: Favorite Blogs”
There are some of you that may think that this blogging/writing thing is new, but in fact the only thing that’s new is the fact that I’m posting it on FB for a little added exposure. So for those of you new to reading my material, and for those of you who just plain missed it, today I’m going to institute a new feature to my blog, and that is sharing some of my older material, which will include reposting some older blogs. Don’t worry—I won’t torture you with recycled material every day, just on Thursdays for now, and this probably won’t be indefinite, but we’ll see. My reason for doing this is twofold: one, it gives me a chance to walk down memory lane, and two it means I don’t have to drag you with me. This new blog site makes it difficult to pick and choose which blogs you wish to read and since I’ve been doing this blogging thing a long time (around 6 years from my closest estimate). For the sake of clarity, we’ll just call these blogs Retro Thursdays; the majority of them have come from my Yahoo! Blog site, but there are others that have been scattered here and there throughout the cyber universe.
But enough talk, here’s my first repost and apparently it’s one of my favorites because I actually reposted part of it in the past. [I am nothing if not consistent.]
For those of you who don’t know by now, I have a strange fascination with writing either on the subject of menstruation (and all the symptoms associated with it), or the bathroom. When I say the bathroom, I don’t mean the standard run-of-the-mill-doing-what-you’re-supposed-to-be in there, but the social etiquette deviants. As an example, let me include for you one of my pieces that I submitted for syndication (of course I have not yet been picked up yet, but keep hope alive people!). [Seriously, still…keep hope alive.]
For your reading pleasure:
Toxic Shock Syndrome ([originally composed] Summer 2007) [It’s hard to believe this building has undergone a renovation and a separate bathroom renovation, and I can still manage to have the same set of issues.]
No, I’m not referring to that small print that’s included on Tampon boxes (I offer my automatic apology to any guys reading this since I know that any reference to that “woman thing” makes you turn away in disgust. But here’s a hint: we do too [even when we are handling our own woman thing]!)
What I am instead referring specifically to is my reaction to people who insist on using their cell phone in a public restroom. The other day, I happened to be casually handling my business, when in the next stall, I heard the telltale sign of someone checking their voicemail. The worst part of it was that she had the voicemail on speaker. While I understand that we all have busy lives, couldn’t she have found a more appropriate time to check her messages? Perhaps after she washed her hands and got out of the bathroom?
The voicemail girl isn’t the only potty faux pas I’ve come across; there was the woman who decided to have a full-fledged conversation in the adjoining stall, and then there’s the person who decided to skip the waiting period and eat while in the stall (that’s a completely separate issue that I refuse to further address [especially in light of how disgusting I told you our bathroom can be]).
As for the conversations, isn’t there a point where a person has to consider this a severe breach of both bathroom and cell phone etiquette? This applies not only to the person on the other end of the phone, who has to endure multiple toilet flushes, but for that unsuspecting person in the next stall who knows there’s someone else in the bathroom besides the person that has similar business.
I don’t know about you, but personally, I am by no means a fan of public facilities anyway. The presence of another person in what’s supposed to be a place of sanctuary often subjects me to all kinds of restroom paranoia. Without getting into too many details, I will say that how much time I spend in the stall, as well as what kind of noises can be heard from my stall are thoughts that occur to me when other people are in the restroom. I also take no pleasure in anyone else’s auditory performances, which for some odd reason also seem to echo in bathrooms. The logical part of me knows that the other person is not in the adjoining stall with a stopwatch, or even worried about my business when she is tending to her own. It, however, does not prevent me from attempting to rush through my necessary roughness as splash free as plausible.
After all, it is rude to interrupt someone on the phone.
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