Public Restrooms

From the time my youngest son could ride in the car without wearing diapers, he could only last about thirty or forty minutes without having to stop to go to the bathroom. I used to think he was doing it to be funny or to look around the bathroom forever, but I learned the hard way that asking him to hold it could be disastrous.

Always the dreamer of the bunch, he had long talks with me about philosophical things that normal people don't think about, so I'm happy to report that he grew up to hold down a prestigious job as a senior technical analyst and makes more money in a year than I do in three. He's also a part-time professional stand-up comedian. (You can check him out in the link below.) Suffice it to say that the little dreamer has done well, and while he's able to make it a few hours on a trip as an adult, the struggle is still real.

Why am I talking about public restrooms? Because I learned from my son the importance of knowing where the "decent" ones are. Wherever we traveled, he would set his sights on restrooms that he knew were good, unless he just couldn't hold it; in which case, he visited other ones, always getting back in the car with a review worthy of Siskel & Ebert.

For years, I had tons of maps, with green dots by the good restrooms and red "x's" by the bad ones to plan our trips. Traveling with your kids is hard enough without thinking about bringing a change of clothes, or cleaning supplies for the kid and the car, etc... so I took him to the best places I could.

Long trips were very difficult going somewhere new. A side effect of being a dreamer is you tend to forget things when you're feeling pressured. We took the kids to Tampa Bay one year for vacation and it was a ten-hour drive. My son had a cast on his arm in addition to his bathroom issues and things were just rough.

I tried to stop at state rest areas as much as possible but there was no limit to the ridiculously filthy restrooms we found, the further south we got. He was such a raw nerve by the time we got to the last rest area, that he wasn't thinking about anything but getting to the restroom on time and getting back in the car to rest.

We got about 30 minutes down the road and he started crying. He didn't want to tell us that he was pretty sure he left his sling in the bathroom at the rest stop, but his arm was hurting so bad he couldn't stand it. Apparently, that restroom had not had maintenance and the tears were not only from the pain, but because he was afraid he was going to have to go back in there, so it must have been really bad. After tossing the stuff in the back seat around to look for the sling, we finally relented and headed back.

We had to drive another twenty minutes to find a turn-around, and then go all the way back. My husband was so mad, I'm pretty sure there was steam coming out of his nose, but he tried to be patient. Family trips are just hard.

When we arrived, my son got out of the car, and wouldn't you know it, as he stepped out, the sling fell out of the car. I thought I was going to have to hose my husband down, but he managed to control his temper by going to a vending machine for snacks and drinks.

Of course, my son had to go again by this time, so I took him to the ladies room so that he wouldn't have to go back into the men's. I realized at that moment that not all rest areas had clean restrooms. I learned a valuable lesson: never send your kids in somewhere to use the restroom if you haven't seen it first.

Over the years, my son got even better at filling us in on where to go. I begged him to publish a review or blog online because back then, we didn't have the review as an internet tool yet, but he would never do it.

These days, you can Google any parameter you need in order to find websites that review restrooms. You can then add good stops to your GPS route if you have a little one who needs to stop more than others, or if incontinence is becoming an issue due to age or health.

And if you don't go into public restrooms with your kids, do yourself a favor and ask them what the bathroom was like. Make key mental notes for future reference. Also, whenever you're in a public restroom, look around. Are there amenities like changing tables, air dryers, automatic flush, etc.? Are they clean? Maybe you can review some one day and help out other people traveling.

If you're planning a trip, try to pre-plan some stops where the restrooms have good reviews, and make the stops frequent enough that no one has to "hold it" for too long. It just makes your life easier and it's better for you. I realize we're usually just trying to get where we're going and few of us ever think about what restrooms we'll use when we leave the house, but why not plan bathroom breaks as part of your trip? It sure put the "rest" back in restrooms for us!

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A good resource for finding a toilet is the "Toilet Finder" app. I'm enclosing a link below.

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Curious how public restrooms got their start? I am including a link to Historian Peter C. Baldwin's article which traces the origin of public toilets in cities to the saloon. Before the turn of the twentieth century, the toilets that saloons hosted were often the only option in urban areas. Saloonkeepers regarded this service “as effective as free lunches in attracting customers.”

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