Restroom hazards

If you are one of the readers who voted in the recent survey against the inclusion of sensitive female issues in this blog, you might want to avoid two places: today's post, and the ladies' restroom at my office. Of course, if you voted in this manner and are also male, we sincerely hope that you would avoid the ladies' restroom anyway, but there is no harm in pointing out the dangers that lie therein.

In restrooms you are held captive to other people's conversations. There is no escaping, because you have to be in there a certain amount of time, and from my experience people holding personal conversations in that location never leave before you do. I keep hoping that during one of these conversations someone will leak the whereabouts of a hidden treasure, or at least the secret to baking really soft cookies, but the only discussions I hear generally involve what Joe's family calls TMI, or Too Much Information.

Yesterday while I was in the restroom, a prominent figure in my company entered with her daughter, who -- this is something I learned while listening to them, which demonstrates that restroom conversations can be enlightening -- apparently works with us. There ensued between mother and daughter, who chose adjoining stalls, a lengthy, detailed discussion of a certain monthly female event, to an extent that I certainly never shared with my own mother. Their motto seemed to be: "No Detail Left Undiscussed."

This left me in a quandary. The longer I waited to leave, the more awkward it seemed to do so. My thought processes went something like this:

Do they know I'm there?
Do they care?
Should I hide? How?

I'll make a noise so they know I'm here.
No, it's too late to make a noise now. The window for letting them know someone else is in here has passed. They'll know I've been listening, and they'll think I listened on purpose.

I'll make myself as small as possible, and keep myself squarely lined up with the center of the door. Maybe they won't notice a closed door.

Of course they'll notice a closed door. The paper towel dispenser is right outside the stall where I am hiding.

I suddenly realized that they had moved on from the topic of Too Much Information and were actually preparing to leave. I was free! But before I could make my own escape, two more people came in. One was saying, "So I went to my gynecologist yesterday...."

Rats. Better luck escaping next time.