Come Out of the Ladies Room!

My favorite radio program recently asked the question, “Women are twice as likely as men to make this mistake in public. What is it?” The answer: go into the wrong restroom. The talk then turned to various theories as to why this happened. One idea was because women are too busy talking to their girlfriends to see the signs on the door. The only woman on the show explained that women go to the bathroom in couples just to discuss what stupid things their dates/boyfriends/husbands do. In other words, the ladies restroom is a private haven for girl talk.

Both sides of this argument pose interesting points for further discussion.

First we should consider the uniqueness of the typical ladies room. It is usually small, but not too small, and practical with all of the devices and mechanisms womankind needs to get rid of the body’s waste byproducts. It is sacred ground; a male-free zone in which no man should enter, excepting those charged with up keeping the maintenance and cleanliness of said facility. It is the one place on earth in which man — any man — can theoretically be blameless for the most common charge leveled against men. I can say with absolute certainty in any case where a toilet seat is left in the upright position in a women’s room, “Sorry, not my fault!”

There has also been some debate among men as to the exact number of devices and mechanisms — otherwise known as the toilet stall - in a typical ladies room. We are mystified by this because, every time one of us asks a woman how many stalls are in a certain ladies room, we get the same answer. We expect to hear a number like one, or two. However, we are more than likely to hear the generic answer, “Not enough!”

For any mathematicians playing along at home, let’s determine that the term “not enough” represent any number between one and infinity. It doesn’t really matter because it appears that any group of women gathered together in one place at one time will always be one more than the stalls available at the nearest ladies room. We can debate this point all we want of course, but there’s no denying this immutable phenomena of nature.

Of course, many members of the grand sisterhood known as the opposite sex insist that this ratio of stalls to women is part of a big conspiracy to deprive women of their natural rights to perform a bodily function in private. I can plead innocence and ignorance about the existence of a conspiracy because I have never been invited to any of the big conspiracy meetings. The reason for that is simple: I’m a registered Democrat.

The idea that the ladies room is also a safe room for personal talk is intriguing. Let me use my attendance at my wife’s knitting meetings at a local restaurant as an example. I go to these meetings not to knit, but to eat dinner, and have delightful conversations with the other members, who coincidentally are all women. This night out with nine to twelve women every other week is the sum total of my social life. Even then it’s not the hot date many of you reading this might believe. I always have a chaperone: my wife Anne Marie.

Let’s say that in the course of a usual meeting I do or say something profoundly stupid. The ladies, being ladies, naturally don’t want to call me out on this in front of the others, yet they feel a need to confirm their initial feelings that I have indeed committed a faux pas. According to the theory presented by my radio show, the ladies may excuse themselves to go to the bathroom, possibly in groups of no less than two at a time, just to comment on what I did?

For more serious offenses, I would fully expect the entire membership to excuse themselves for an ad hoc meeting of the minds in front of the bathroom sink. I would become very suspicious at this point because I know from previous experience that there are “not enough” stalls to accommodate all these women at once (see math equation above). I would reason that the chances of everyone needing the ladies room at the same time are very remote, unless of course the kitchen put way too much pepper in the vegetable soup again. In that case, it might be very plausible for the sudden run to the bathroom. Otherwise, I would just assume that I had just screwed up royally big time.

I just find it hard to believe that women would go to such lengths to have a private conversation with each other. Think about this: if women go to the ladies room every time their man does or says something incredibly dumb, then there is a good chance we will never see them again. They will vanish into the ladies room never to return. The human race would die out, since reproduction of the human species would cease.

In an effort to stop this from happening, I will offer this: please ladies, come out of the bathroom. We promise that we won’t try to deliberately do anything that would embarrass you or anything that you and your girlfriends consider real dumb. Just give us some time to work the stupidity out of our system. We are, after all, guys and we’ve been doing stupid things for several thousand years now.

Just come out of the bathroom so we can talk, okay? Oh, and don’t leave the toilet seat up. We have it on good authority that is one of those stupid things men do.