A Tireless Search

What makes the perfect campus bathroom? There are many factors that must be considered and only an expert on the issue, one who has dedicated a majority of their energies during their four years of college in pursuit of such an elusive, often believed to be mythical, entity, to properly answer this important question. Luckily for you I am that expert. For three years and one semester I scoured the campus of my institution for that illusive bathroom, and after three years and one semester I found such a bathroom, giving myself one full semester of blissful excretion. This is an issue that means a great deal to me. Having respectable stomach and digestive problems, it is of grave importance for me to find a quiet and peaceful place to call home for 10 minutes after lunch on campus. But, as grateful as I am to have found the perfect bathroom at my previous school I can’t emphasize enough how important the journey is. In everything you do, whether it’s paint a picture, run a marathon, or find the perfect public bathroom, the journey, the opportunity for growth and revelation should never be forgotten. It’s so easy to get lost in the search and to focus solely on the end product that you lose sight of what truly matters. I can’t tell you exactly what you’ll find on your quest, for no one path is the same, but I can tell you that if you keep an open mind along the way you’ll be rewarded with more than just a nice place to sit and pass the time. For me, a better understanding of human nature lay ahead of me. While experiencing as many bathrooms as I could it occurred to me that no matter what bathroom you use, whether it is the 1st floor library, 3rd floor library, basement of the Union, or the law building in another city, people will write stupid things on the walls. The random swear word is typical. Sometimes we get more creative and write a raunchy poem. We may get political stating that a particular candidate is a “fag”. I’m almost positive that if I were to visit a bathroom outside the court room of the United State Supreme Court I would be delighted to find that, “Sandra Day O’Connor was here”. This journey is so important to me that I have only shared with a select few the location of that special bathroom I had found at my previous institution.
But I digress. What makes a perfect restroom? For me traffic must be minimal, meaning that the chances of someone walking into the bathroom while I use it are low. I would say that if someone walks in on me 1 out of 30 times I happen to be using that bathroom then there is too much traffic and I must advance my search. The issue of automatic hand sanitation is a complicated one but one that can weigh quite heavily on my attitude towards a bathroom. Automatic sinks, a negative, automatic foam soap dispensers, a huge positive, automatic air dyers, huge negative, automatic paper towel dispensers, big positive, if, with one pass of my hand I am given an amount of paper that equals one and a half normal paper towels. Location is vital. A good centralized location, one which I can access easily in my ten minute break between class, can make all the difference. All of these things though can be just right and it still may not be the bathroom for you. You cannot underestimate the power of the “it” factor when selecting a washroom. If you don’t feel comfortable, if you don’t feel at home in this bathroom, then this is not a place where you will want to invest a large portion day. But after all is said and done, if your stomach is like mine and is the primary reason you embarked on this long and arduous search for the perfect bathroom, if the noises that come from your stall can be heard from even the most remote location, then the words “there’s no place like home” may ring truer than any phrase ever uttered before.
THANKS