public restroom glory
I didn’t plan on being an early potty-trainer. I’m not sure I can even take credit for the feat. Laura basically potty trained herself last August, a few months shy of her second birthday. To be fair, my sister would clarify that Laura is not actually potty trained, but rather I am potty trained, as she is not tall enough to climb onto the seat herself, and needs assistance in the “paper wiper” department, as she calls it.
For better or for worse, though, we’ve been diaper free (although, I regret to inform you, not accident free) for almost a year now. Aside from the chorus of praise from a generation whose children were all perfectly potty trained by eighteen months (“and what’s wrong with mothers these days anyway?”), there have been several perks to kissing diapers goodbye: so long, diaper bag slouch; adios, $40 giant box of Huggies every month; ciao, landfill guilt; see ya, scrapping poop off the cloth diapers I invested in to assuage the wallet crunch and landfill guilt… The list goes on. But, honestly, there is one experience that has tempted me to put my perfectly potty trained big girl back into pampers. I have become convinced that no perk can outweigh the trauma of public restrooms with a toddler.
The worst of it came during a trip to the mall. I secretly wonder if my husband actually suggested this tactic to Laura, as it has so deeply affected my psyche that I rarely set foot in the den of materialism, so scarred am I by the thought of using a public restroom with her. We were there, the two of us, in the tiny stall (the more spacious handicapped stall having been examined and deemed too dirty). Everything was fine and dandy. We lined the seat, she held onto me, and not the seat, as I squatted down in front of her, face nearer to the toilet than anyone should have to suffer. We even avoided the automatic flush, which sometimes causes a lightning speed lift and pivot of the urinating toddler to avoid the plagued germ-filled back-splash attacking her innocent bottom and my already suffering face.
I thought we were in the clear when I pulled her pants up and instructed her to wait while Mommy went potty. All I had to do now was take care of my business while constantly engaging her in conversation to distract her from all the interesting little doors and mailboxes and scum to see and touch in a public restroom. “Laura, keep your hands down, don’t touch anything!” my mother’s voice chided from my mouth. And she did keep her hands down. I looked away for a second, as is sometimes required in the business I was simultaneously attending too, and lifted my eyes just in time to see her lick the tiled wall. I repeat: just in time to see her lick the tiled wall.
All of a sudden, touching the door handle, even the God-forbidden sticking of the hand into the sanitary napkin box, didn’t seem so awful. At least I could sanitize her hands. The best part was that she looked up at me, beaming with pride, as if she had figured out a riddle: “See, Mom, I accomplished my mission and didn’t touch the icky bathroom with my hands!” And that, she had.
