The Means to Flush
Who travels to Europe and spends as much time perusing the water closets as they do roaming through the Duomo of Milano? Well, I do. Perhaps it goes back to my nomadic youth traveling across the Western states. It wasn’t that I really couldn’t hold it for another half an hour before visiting the next toilet, and it certainly wasn’t a bladder control problem. Looking back I think it was my way of combating boredom. Breaking up the monotony of staring at the back of the same red leather seat in my folks’ Chrysler, of seeing herd after herd of antelope, of counting license plates from different states, and of fighting ferociously with my older, larger sister for my rightful half of the back seat. Bathrooms were the focal points of my journeys, especially on our twelve hour trips to Utah twice each year. My step-father boasted, often with disdain, that I knew every single bathroom on that twelve hour trek. It was true. There was a certain comfort, and a mile marker all my own, when we would arrive in Evanston, Wyoming and pull up to that dingy Shell station because I knew that inside of that greying building there was housed the only cushy, padded toilet seat of its kind. Or at least it had been my vast toilette knowledge to know. Read more
