#970 Using hotel lobby bathrooms when you’re out walking around

Anyone else out there have a bladder the size of a walnut? One that fills up after a few spoons of soup and is on attention, ready to drain any time of the day? If you’re afraid of getting a drink before the movie or having a glass of water anytime after 6pm, then you’re with me. My small and weak-bladdered brothers and sisters of the world, unite!

See, we got issues, me and you. We’re terrible on airplanes. We never get to experience the 7-11 Super Big Gulp. And maybe worst of all, we’re always forcing our friends to help us find public washrooms when we’re walking or driving anywhere, which really drives them crazy. Sorry, friends.

If you’re with me on this one, then you know these searches for decent public washrooms really are a fine art. That perfect place to unzip and drip is always out there, but you really need to be careful. With that warning, let me present to you the Top 5 Places To Pee When You’re Out Somewhere:

• #5 Gas stations. Gas stations know they are easy prey for the worst kind of fly-by urinators — those who don’t live nearby, give their name, or plan on ever coming back. Those kind of people do not respect bathroom facilities — that we know from the racist scrawls on bathroom walls and the obvious mistaking of floors for toilets. Bad ones smell rancid. Good ones smell like a flatbed truck full of urinal pucks sitting on a garbage dump. But hey, sometimes gas stations appear like toilet mirages on the horizon, and at least you know they’re almost always open, and almost always have a toilet. So we give you Number 5, gas stations. Thanks for coming out.
• #4 Bus or train stations. Bus or train station bathrooms are just like gas stations, but with one key difference: maintenance. Whereas gas stations are usually being run by individual owner-operators or a couple of teenagers working the midnight shift who employ the use of a key on a big piece of wood instead of a toilet brush and mop, bus or train stations are generally run by formal transit authorities or city governments who employ people just to clean the place up, because otherwise they’d look bad and maybe get kicked off the board or something. The other plus to bus or train stations is size. They usually have rows of stalls or urinals instead of one. Very little chance of having to wait. So thanks, bus or train station bathroom. You’re there when we need you.
• 3. Restaurants. Next, restaurants! Okay, we’re starting to get into decent bathroom territory now. Here there’s maybe an extra ply on the toilet paper and perhaps a sports section or Far Side comic pinned up over the urinal. Restaurant bathrooms are much better, but they are a little hard to get at — you’ve either got to sit down and buy something, or pretend you’re looking for someone before running to the back of the place. Care and delicacy is required. Not for the full or faint of heart.
• 2. Somebody’s nearby house – Always great for a pit stop when you’re driving. This is where you make the mid-trip pit stop at a local friend’s apartment or house. They don’t necessarily have to be hanging out with you at the time. Just buzzing their place and asking if you can use the can is completely fine. Once you get in you’ll be living large with thick toilet paper, some fancy tangerine-pomegranate cream soap maybe, and occasionally a stack of dog-eared magazines. Try not to judge them based on all that hair in the sink, the bath towel laying on the floor, or the bright, glowing toilet bowl ring staring up at you like the eye of Sauron. Don’t judge, just enjoy and get out.
• 1. Hotel lobby bathrooms – Now we finally reach the cream of the crop, the cherry on the sundae, the top of the roller coaster. Yes, the spacious, luxurious, over-the-top hotel lobby bathrooms really are magical when you’ve been walking around all day, sweating under a backpack and blazing sun, just searching for a place to lighten your load. Hotel bathrooms are great because they are so sinful and wasteful. Really, nothing in there is necessary! In a hotel bathroom you can pretend you’re the Emperor of Toilets, commander over a vast plumbing empire, ruler of all faucets and mirrors for miles around. Hotel lobby bathrooms treat us street-walking folks like uppity business class travelers. I mean, who likes to dry their hands with face cloths anyway? Who needs chairs or couches in the bathroom for that post-dump lounge? And who really wants one of those bathroom butlers sneakily wedged into a corner wearing a tux, holding out cologne and towels for you? Who needs this?

Well us, that’s who! We thimble-bladdered folk need this once in a while. I’m sorry but we need it. A little pampering and comforting for our terrible genetic sins. So thank you, hotel lobby bathrooms for treating us with grace and dignity amongst a world of people who don’t like to hang out with us.

AWESOME!