Tales from the Airport Men's Room

Let's face it: men are pigs.

We can't help it. We try to be civilized, but it just doesn't come naturally to us. Case in point: the condition of the average men's public restroom.

While en route home this week from a trip to Florida, the call of nature compelled me to visit the men's facilities in terminal 3 of the Fort Lauderdale airport.

Apparently a jumbo-jet full of men afflicted with incontinence, who had just finished an in-flight watermelon-eating contest, landed at the terminal right before I got to the restroom.

Oh, the inhumanity!

Various areas of the floor around the urinals were puddled with what I could only assume was something I really didn't want being tracked around on the bottom of my shoes. Guys were lined up three deep for the urinals. The stalls were filled.

I was in a hurry. I had a plane to catch.

Then I spotted the one empty stall in the corner. It was the extra-large stall marked for handicapped use.

There were no handicapped men in sight. It seemed a shame to let this valuable bit of real estate go to waste when there was a roomful of men in such dire need.

I calculated that even if someone in a wheelchair was heading that direction, I would be in and out before they could get there. Worst case scenario: I would have to abandon the mission mid-stream, so to speak, if a handicapped man in desperate straits began pounding on the door.

There are moments in a man's life when he is forced to make a split-second decision, and move forward regardless of the consequences.

I had made up my mind. I was going in.

So it was that I found myself in a clean, spacious stall, with its own private sink. It was an oasis of tranquility amidst the sloshing bedlam in the rest of the men's room. I suddenly wished I had a newspaper and a cup of coffee, and did not have to rush out to catch a plane.

It didn't take long for my idyllic repose to be interrupted by some crude fool pounding at the stall door. I could see his feet under the partition. He was no more handicapped than me, and he could just wait his turn like everyone else.

"Just a minute!" I shouted.

A few moments later, some joker about 6'6" was peeking over the partition at me. I looked up at him and he quickly turned away. Is there no respect for privacy these days?

When I was ready to leave, I washed my hands in my private sink, and made my way out through the wading pool in the middle of the room. An overworked custodian had arrived with a mop. He would have a long afternoon ahead of him trying to keep up with this mob.

I elbowed my way through the crowd, and just as I made it out the door, I noticed a young father (who was apparently traveling alone with his daughter) leading a bewildered-looking 4-year-old girl into the men's room that I had just escaped. This might get ugly, I thought to myself.

I could only hope that father and daughter had thick rubber-soled shoes, and that they were fortunate enough to find the corner stall with the private sink.