In the I.R.

The word "restroom" and "bathroom" feel like misnomers to me. I don't "rest" when I am in there, nor do I always have the luxury of taking a bath or the desire to powder my nose in the "ladie's room."

I was the 6 year old kid who loved my Gremlins Gizmo doll so incredibly much that I brought him into the bathroom with me in our Chester, New Hampshire home. Wherever I went, he went...literally. Well, almost. I didn't go as far as to believe he was real and needed to sit on a toilet like humans, but my borderline obsession with having him near me led to his ultimate demise. I flushed the toilet and after picking him up a few minutes later, he fell out of the grasp of my tiny hands. Freefall right into the (clean) toilet. Poor Gizmo was not the same after that. Our relationship was forever changed and no longer close. I learned relationships and bathrooms (as in having relationships in bathrooms) don't always mix. Note to self: be cautious and selective about who and what you bring in there.

When I was between 9-11 years old, the restroom became my escape route from dinners I detested eating. I loved the invention of toilet paper, small bathroom trash cans, and the magical white porcelain garbage disposal. I pretended that I had to get up from the table to use the restroom and....well, boy did I use it. I would put a big forkful of whatever nasty food it was that I was forced to eat into my mouth and leisurely mosey into the bathroom. It was easy to do because I was the only one sitting at the dinner table at this point. Once past the door into the room that was my newfound savior, I spit the food into the toilet paper and rolled it up. Into the toilet it went. Flushed down into the sewage abyss, where it belonged for its lack in exquisite taste. I wonder if my father or stepmother ever discovered my sneaky strategy. Of course, it didn't help as much as if I could have discarded the whole meal....but having one less measly bite to swallow made it less grueling.

In my teen years, the bathroom started to turn on me. Once a friend, it became more of a fair weather friend...made me feel good one minute, then turned on me the next. I had a love/hate relationship with mirrors. If I was skinny, I loved them. I spent more time often than not, however, overweight. I tried to avoid looking at my curves in the mirror, instead opting to focus on looking at my head. If I could have just removed my head from the rest of my body and put it on the counter like one of those heads they use to train cosmetologists on hair and makeup, it would have boosted my self-esteem. How beautiful a head can be without the rest of the body attached....nice hair, straight white teeth, glowing skin.

Into my early adult years, I remember being in a restaurant with my mom. We had just arrived and I felt like my bladder was about to explode. Before bothering to even sit down at the table, I turned to my mom and asked her "Where's the bathroom?" With a slightly annoyed look on her face, she made a remark about how I always ask her that when we are in a restaurant and that I do it with a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as if something horrible will happen or that I haven't the confidence to find it without anyone's help. I had never felt so self-conscious about my relationship to bathrooms before or since. I also don't ask my mom where it is anymore.

Perhaps we need different terms for this room, depending on the circumstances. After all, it is misleading to say we are resting if we are really plotting an escape, bathing if we are really showering, looking at ourselves in the mirror if we are in actuality finding ways to avoid the mirror. It's time to redefine the words we use to describe what we do in what typically tends to be an intimate room. We call the emergency room the ER. Can the "bathroom" instead be called the IR?