Posted by Mark Weiss on April 22, 2013
Sounds like the opening of a joke, doesn't it?
It's not. I'm going to start with a brief interlude in which I brag about my kids. I will end with the tale of a bathroom.
Tinkerbell, Jedediah and Elly Mae each have some talent. Tink and Elly Mae each dance. Jedediah woke up one morning and wanted to act, and he's got some chops.
Sela and I, together, have five left feet. The only person I know who has a voice worse than Sela does is me. So where they get this talent, we don't know.
In the last week, we've been to a recital for Elly Mae's dance team, an awards banquet for Tink's dance team and several performances of Jed's play.
Sela and I are extremely proud of each of them. They selected activities that were important to them, and they worked HARD and practiced. A lot. There are few things that have given me as much joy as a parent as seeing them get excited about an activity that they chose, as opposed to the requisite soccer, etc. that every kid is forced to try.
We'll talk about Tinkerbell's foray into horseback riding in some post in the future. No idea what that was all about.
As Buzz once said (and I'm paraphrasing), "To the bathroom, AND BEYOND!"
Jed's play was at the Junior High School. Which is convenient because Jed's a junior high student.
Being at the Junior High School necessitates going to the bathroom in a junior high school bathroom.
With me so far?
It shouldn't surprise you to learn that boy's junior high school bathrooms smell like junior high school boys. So I was put in a foul humor upon entering.
I'm also fairly convinced that the first casualty of school budget cuts was functional toilet paper. This stuff was the worst of the industrial bad. Wow. It was so bad that my butt audibly complained. Seriously.
Despite all of that, the worst part was the sink design. Picture this. Two side-by-side sinks. Not a problem. Where were the soap and paper towel dispensers? To the left of the sink on the left, of course. You couldn't get to them from the sink on the right. You might as well have had one sink since only one was usable at one time.
Don't give me any complaints about space constraints. There were options. A myriad of options. Between the sinks for the soap dispenser? Anyone? Anyone?
At least I only had to use the thing a few times. Jed's gotta use it all the time.