When you’re on campus for eight hours a day, you will have to use public bathrooms. I don’t like most public bathrooms, but I appreciate their convenience.

Because it’s a communal bathroom, you never know what you might walk into. Messy, filthy, or stinky; you just never know. I can’t tell you how many bathrooms I’ve walked out of, with a pile of crunched up paper towels behind the door. This proves how uncomfortable people are with restrooms. When they don’t want to touch the door handle, but to get out they do what they have to.
When most people use bathrooms, they get in and get out. But not everyone. They can be meeting places of the odd kind or a place to just be yourself.

Some people just don’t want to pause their communication, no matter where they are. Occasionally, I will come between two good friends and their conversation. They will go to the stalls on either side of me and continue talking to one another like their sitting on a park bench. It’s a little awkward when you accidently overhear other people’s conversations. It’s worse when you are forced to hear a conversation that is way too detailed about other peoples’ lives and you can’t just walk away. I feel bad for flushing because I don’t want to interrupt, but I do it anyways. I imagine that situation might compare to sitting in a confessional booth.

I don’t know how I time it, but it seems like when I use a particular bathroom on campus, I walk in on a soloist hitting notes I did not know existed. The singing always comes from a stall, so I have never seen her, I just recognize her voice. She sings as if she is in her shower at home, not a public bathroom.

The first time I heard her, I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. It was weird because I have never heard anyone just belting it out in a stall before, so I started laughing to myself because I didn’t know what else do.

I don’t know the words to what she was singing. Not because she sounded awful, but because I rushed out of there because I didn’t want to see who it was.

A week later, the same thing happened, except this time I almost turned around as soon as I opened the door. It felt like I was intruding on her moment. Although I hurried to leave, I couldn’t help but smile and admire her for being able to love singing so much but to be loud enough to let everyone else within the room enjoy it too. I understand know why musicians like to records in bathrooms. The acoustics are something else.

vgross@mesastate.edu