Take the hall pass...

On this beautiful, early summer day, I decided to pick #2 up for lunch and take her out. Being my middle child, she often gets short shrift in terms of alone time with me. #1 stays up later, so she and I get to watch Gilmore Girls, and Little Man is only in school mornings, so we get the afternoons to hang out. There really isn’t any time when #2 isn’t competing for attention, so every once in a while, she and I have a clandestine lunch date at a café on main street in New Town, where we get to talk about what sounds koalas make or how she wants to go to Hawaii.

In order to make time for this lunch, I ran around like a headless chicken all morning, resulting in a very full bladder once I reached the school.* Knowing I wouldn’t make it to the café without wetting myself, I ducked into netherworld that is the girl’s bathroom and was instantly transported back to my own school days.

The bathroom at school is more than just a place to take care of business. It can be a quiet refuge from the pressure of the classroom or the schoolyard. Getting a little fed up with this morning’s fractions lesson? Raise your hand and you’ve bought yourself five to eight minutes of peace – provided you haven’t abused the privilege. Never a trouble maker, my third grade teacher called my parents to see if I was suffering from any health issues when I began to asked to be excused several times a day, rather than accuse me of skipping out on lessons. My response when my parents concernedly inquired about my frequent trips to the loo? “I’m bored.”

After being in a loud, active classroom, the bathroom is eerily quiet. You can hear every breath and tinkle – a fact that contributed to my never, EVER, going #2 at school. You can stare at yourself in the shatterproof mirror, or read the scandalous graffiti left behind by 5th graders, that usually involves the word “Poop” or “Pee”, and be secretly thrilled to read the rare one that involves a real swear word. If a friend or acquaintance happens to wander in, you’ve hit the jackpot. Having a chat in the bathroom in primary school is equivalent to standing around the water cooler at the office. You can roll your eyes about the boss ranting about late homework and bitch about your co-workers hogging the purple marker.

The bathroom can also be a scary place if you happen to walk in on a gaggle of older kids solo. Hoping to escape any ribbing, you duck into a stall, hoping they’ll be gone by the time you have to wash your hands, which you will avoid doing if they are hanging out by the sink. The bathroom is Notre Dame for bad kids, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” Teachers and the principal are rarely going to invade the bathroom to see what some kid is doing, In my day, it was just an inappropriate feeling that kept the adults out, now it’s the fear of being labeled a pedophile** which allows frustrated ne’er-do-wells to clog the sink with industrial-grade brown paper towels, that were as effective at drying hands as construction paper, and lock all the stalls from the inside.

Not wanting to ruin the one place kids can get away from adults for five friggin’ minutes, I exited quickly and made my way down the hall to #2’s classroom, chuckling to myself as remembered my own walks back to class. So today, to honor that, I walked slowly, examining the hallway billboards, stopped to get a drink at the fountain, that still tasted like a handful of nickels, and generally took my sweet time. It just didn’t feel the same without a fraction lesson waiting for me.

*The number one cause of UTIs in women ages 25-40? Raising children.
**That was me today, as I startle three 2nd graders having an in depth discussion about iCarly.