Things That Burn My Biscuits: Public Bathroom Edition

I feel tense. A familiar pressure rumbles in my bowels. No, it's not the fact that I just ate a hamburger from Waffle House and then half my weight in donut holes .Well, it's kind of that. But it's also that I haven't vented all of the minor, irrational frustrations that every day life has to offer me. I've just let them fester and swell, and now I'm all bloaty and cranky. So you, unfortunate reader, are about to be on the receiving end of a trivial crapstorm I like to call Things That Burn My Biscuits. And in keeping with this paragraph's uncomfortable allusions, this will be the Public Bathroom Edition.

A good public restroom should do three basic things: 1) Allow you to relieve bodily waste, 2) Minimize awkwardness, and 3) Not give you the ebola virus. Sometimes it's very easy to guess when a public restroom is not going to fulfill some or all of these requirements before going in. For example, if you have to request a special key from the Circle K cashier, and it's attached to a hubcap, you can reasonably guess that you are about to stumble upon an active heroin den with an out-of-order commode. If you're lucky you will be mugged for the hubcap before you accidentally become witness to more heinous crimes.

But at least you know what you're getting into before hand. My complaints have to do with respectable establishments who enjoy punishing you for ordering that venti at Starbucks knowing good and well you wouldn't be home for another three hours. They purposefully ignore the Three Basic Public Bathroom Requirements (I just made that a thing. Let's push this amendment through Congress). These elements are the biggest perpetrators:

The Stall Doors

If you pick a random bathroom and take a survey of the stall doors, 4 out of every 5 of them will not close because the door exceeds the frame. However, that last randomly selected door will not properly close because the frame exceeds the door, forcing the occupant to make intermittent eye contact with the mirror images of everyone using the sinks. If you do find a door that is properly measured (statistically, you have a better chance of finding an albino sasquatch), the sliding lock will be approximately four inches higher than the catch.

Holy crap! It's an albino sasqu-...oh wait, that's just Gregg Allman.

How hard is it to correctly measure and install a door? I mean, I could probably never do it, which is why no smart person would ever pay me to do so. But someone's job was to install that door, and they took a look at it afterward and thought, “No one should have given me tools. I am bad at my job. Hey look, breaktime!”

The Entrance

Some public restrooms don't even wait until you get in the door before they make you regret your body's stupid natural processes. Some bathrooms don't utilize a courtesy wall. This is a wall that greets you immediately upon entering that you have to walk around to get to the actual bathroom, thus blocking the view of everyone walking by as someone else opens the door. And people look when doors open. “What's behind that door currently opening?” everyone wonders. “Is it a secret room with a chocolate syrup pool? Is it a room filled with wall-to-wall trampolines? Gosh, I hope it's a room filled with wall-to-wall trampolines.” All of these thoughts take a split second. That's just long enough for someone to glance over and see an old man at a urinal who may or may not be smiling at them. The only way I know to assure privacy in this type of bathroom is to strike up an agreement with everyone else in the restroom that no one else leaves or opens the door, and if anyone tries to come in they are to be attacked ferociously with whatever bathroom utensil can best be wielded for bludgeoning. Basically, I am advocating holding hostages and using violence, because that's how much I like my privacy.

Have you ever beaten someone unconscious in a grocery store bathroom with a toilet brush?

Uhhhh....me either. Just, um, forget I asked.

The Faucets

So you've done your business and now you're ready to wash your hands, or at the very least run water over them to give others the appearance that you are not a disgusting wildebeest teaming with contagions. But alas, the faucet spout only extends beyond the frame of the sink by a couple of centimeters, causing you to contort your hands, trying to get every inch of them under the stream. Why?! Why is the water trickling down the back of the sink!? Because the same guy who installed the stall doors also installed the faucet, probably.

This man. This is the man I blame.

I like for there to be plenty of room for my hands when I'm washing them. Ideally I'd be standing in the middle of a large meadow with an isolated stream of water flowing miraculously down from the heavens. I'd flail my arms around wildly while sarcastically exclaiming “WHERE'S THE BACK OF THE SINK NOW, HUH?” Sadly, this is not a valid option while using a public restroom, nor is it even a sane desire. I would settle for a faucet that extended no less than three inches from the sink wall.

Runner up in this category belongs to the sinks at most Wal-Marts. They are fine sinks, with the faucets providing adequate hand washing room. The problem is that they are motion sensored, but to trigger them you have to stick your hands past the faucet spout. The water promptly sprays your wrists, and the instant you try to move your hands back into the stream, the sensors turn off and the water stops. This results in about 5 minutes of me trying to be quicker than the faucet before I give up and rinse my hands with my own bitter tears of rage.

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Whew! I feel much better now. Thanks for letting me vent for a moment. I'm really not this petty in person, I promise. And if you've ever been in a store and opened a bathroom door only to have me threaten you with a plunger or thrown Ajax cleaner in your eyes, I'm very sorry. It's just that public bathrooms make me a little crazy sometimes. I'm sure you understand.

404 Not Found (My Week in Atlanta)

I spent a large amount of my week in Atlanta flipping u-turns, missing exits, and generally just driving in a random direction hoping I would see something I recognized. And this was with the aid of my iPhone's GPS. It's amazing that I'm still not in the bowels of Emory University's campus, crying and asking students if I could maybe crash at their dorm until my mommy comes looking for me. Seriously, how did people ever find their destination before the advent of turn-by-turn technology? I imagine they got lost a whole lot, and then had to convince themselves and everyone around that they had, indeed, found what they were looking for even if that included constantly starting a new life.

"Boom! There it is. North America. That place I was totally looking for!" -Christopher Columbus

I was in Atlanta to take care of Fuji, my brother Aaron and his girlfriend's cat. They went on a week-long cruise, and as I was jobless and growing weary of Birmingham, it seemed like a pretty great excuse to hang out in a new city for a week. Free place to stay, stocked fridge, the unconditional love of a cat – it's everything I need in life to make me happy. I was going to live like a true Atlantan, as defined by Ludacris.

Cailtin's house, my home for the week, is nestled in a quiet neighborhood in a northern Atlantan suburb. Or it would have been quiet if her neighbors had not chosen that week to cut down every tree in their yard and employed a team of early-rising Leatherfaces to do it. Every morning I woke up at about 8am EST (4am Nathan Standard Time) in a murderous rage at the chainsaws that were a few feet from the nearest window. I could eventually brush it off and fall back asleep, but one morning someone knocked on the door and asked me to move my car so debris wouldn't fall on it. I was pretty groggy, and somehow I locked myself out of the house. Luckily Caitlin, knowing that I was closely related to her boyfriend, planned for such an incident and hid a spare key. But I only half-read the note that explained where the key was hidden because what am I stupid? (answer: yes). I then proceeded to play an exciting game of Find the Key before a Tree Falls on my Car. It was tough, but I won.

While I was in Atlanta I, of course, had to try new restaurants. I ate at a 24-hour Vietnamese place where I had a mysterious but delicious square, spongy...thing. Midnight is too late to be eating yak spleen or some sort of reproductive organ, so if that's what I was doing I didn't want to know about it. My favorite dish I tried was at The Nook by Piedmont Park, and it was a huge plate of tater tots covered in chili and macaroni. By the way, that discomfort you are currently feeling in your torso is either your heart seizing up or your stomach trying to break through your abdominal wall and hitchhike to The Nook. Either way you should consult a physician, because both will result in your untimely death.

I also wandered through a couple farmer's markets, which are more international bazaar than anything. Buford Highway, where the markets are located, is a really unique area in that there are so many cultures represented. There are foods from around the world - Korea, Mexico, Vietnam, Japan, and whatever country thinks it's normal to sell live crawfish with nothing but tongs and a paper bag to put them in so you can do the rest of your shopping with angry river cockroaches in tow.

Alone they are harmless, but in swarms they could eat your children

I was surprised to stumble upon Georgia White Dirt again, hanging out with the mangoes. This confirms that more than one crazy grocer in Atlanta sells dirt in a bag, puts it in the food aisle, then warns you not to eat it by putting "not intended for human consumption" on the label. However, the Georgia White Dirt suppliers must be changing their marketing strategy, because I found one bag that had conspicuously erased the "not".

Directions: Step 1) put in mouth. Step 2) swallow. 

Step 3) call a doctor, because you have worms now. Step 4) repeat as desired.

My purchases at the markets included some foreign sodas, an albino coconut, and what I thought would be a delicious milk-like drink. It turns out it was nothing more than a bottle of the runny part of cottage cheese, and I am saving my upchuck for the shoes of the man who thought that would be a good idea.

I like my milk to be white, but this is dang near "Aryan"...*rimshotcymbalcrash*

I learned a lot during my stay in Atlanta, and not just about terrible food. It was good for me to get out of my comfort zone. I've been on plenty of vacations and trips, but this was the longest I had spent away from Birmingham in a long time, and it was interesting to see what things I missed and who I missed. I crashed several YSA church activities while I was there, and I was the "new guy". I haven't been the new guy at anything in 8 years, and I forgot how much effort it takes. Everyone was super nice, though, and went out of their way to make me feel welcome. It made me realize that I'm not the best at welcoming others, and that's something I need to work on. It also made me realize that new isn't always a bad thing. Heck, under certain circumstances I am willing to admit that new can be a good thing. But only under circumstances I dictate, and I still reserve the right to be set in my ways.

You didn't think I'd change that much in week, did you?