Blindingly Crazy Bathrooms In Virgina

This last weekend on my return from an unfortunate visit to Virginia, more on that in a moment, I had the most odd bathroom experience. It was probably the most poorly laid out public bathroom I’d ever been in but I won’t go into that.

So already bothered by the strange layout I entered the handicapped stall after a five-minute wait. Since the handicapped stall is so large they had installed a foldaway baby changing station on the wall. As I was taking care of business and observing my surroundings I noticed that the baby changing station offered direction written in Braille. At first, this didn’t seem unusual to me but within moments I began to laugh out loud.

Think of the circumstances whereby these directions might be used. This was a bathroom at a truck stop on I-80. You would assume that most of the patrons of this establishment would be interstate travelers and therefore any blind man in need of a baby changing station at truck stop would have been traveling with at least two other people: the baby and an adult capable of driving. That other sighted adult would presumably also be capable of changing a baby’s diaper. So here’s the scenario: a blind man and his wife stop to get gas and change their baby’s poopy diaper. The woman say, "Honey, will you do me a favor and change the baby’s diaper when you go to the bathroom." The blind man, apparently also retarded, says, "Sure, honey!" He takes the baby in his arms, which makes it very difficult to use his cane, and makes the short but perilous journey across the busy parking lot and through the unfamiliar store all the way to the bathroom. Assuming he ever made it to the bathroom and into the correct stall he would have to rub his hands all over the bathroom walls to find the baby changing station and the directions written in Braille. This scenario is already absurd and gross enough without describing what it might be like for a blind man to change a baby’s poopy diaper, so I just won’t go there. This guy must be really desperate and helpless to stay with this woman. So, this is why I was laughing on the potty.

There were a few more odd things about this bathroom. The bathroom was moderately clean looking but the sink area had a lot of standing water. To get a squirt of soap your arm had to extend and almost touch the front of the paper towel dispenser. However, the paper towel dispenser was one of those infrared activated models so when you reached for your soap the towel began spilling out the dispenser into the pooled water on the countertop. Worse yet, the soap was the greasy stuff that takes several seconds of scrubbing to get off your hands. This is usually not a problem but the water faucet was also infrared activated meaning that there were two settings, on and off, no temperature control. The water coming out of this faucet was probably 120 degrees so you had to scald your hands to rinse off the greasy soap.

At first thought I told myself that I’d avoid this place if I ever found myself on I-80 in the future but I think I’ve reconsidered. I actually got more joy out that bathroom than from nearly anything else on the trip.