EPISODE 7 EPISODE 7It was June, time for my annual columnists’ conference. The events were held in different cities each year, and I looked forward to getting away from my “home office” (i.e., my laptop on the kitchen table) flying off to a different location and feeling like a real journalist.
This time, I was headed all the way to Los Angeles to spend a long weekend with the group of newspaper columnists that had become both professional colleagues and friends since I joined the group in 2010.
In all the years of military moves and traveling, I never loved flying, but I felt a certain excitement that day about going off on my own away from Francis and the kids and the perpetually repeating responsibilities of being a wife and mother. After a quick goodbye with Francis at curb-side drop off, I wheeled my bag confidently into the Providence airport, chin in the air, preprinted boarding pass in hand, heels clicking—playing the part of a seasoned traveling professional.
Damn, security screening. The hassle of flying always took me by surprise.
My role as a traveling journalist shriveled as I entered the raw humanity of the TSA line. I shuffled forward, foot by foot, staring clumsily at the same twenty people every time we zig-zagged past each other toward the security screening agents who held our destinies in their latex-gloved hands. Thirty minutes later, I’d formed a silent kinship with my fellow travelers. In the microcosm of airport society, they were my friends. At the end of the line, I bid them a temporary adieu and nervously approached the TSA agent’s podium.
The agent looked from my documentation to my face to my ID, making me feel like a fugitive wanted for heinous crimes. I feared that TSA German shepherds might sense my natural guilt complex and attack, but somehow I passed and was directed to the security screening conveyor belts.
Everyone tried to act nonchalant as we fumbled for grey plastic bins. We wanted to appear to be a savvy travelers, but all were uneasy with the indignity of the process. I scrambled to remember the complicated rules: Do I remove my jacket in addition to my shoes and belt? If my laptop has to be in a bin by itself, does my phone get its own bin too? Will that packet of ketchup in my purse be flagged as liquid? Will the screener think my hairdryer is a gun?
I stood, legs spread and arms over my head, in the futuristic metal detector as an exhaled puff blew my hair into the air. The lady behind me was selected for a random pat-down. I tried not to gawk. We retrieved our bins, and as my comrades and I put our shoes and belts back on, I felt like we’d all had an awkward one-night stand.
Finally headed toward my gate, I stopped to get a cup of coffee, but the Dunkin’ Donuts line was longer than the one at TSA. Turned out, I had plenty of time. My flight was delayed two hours due to a flight attendant calling in sick at the last minute.
The large latte hit my bladder about a half hour before boarding, so I went in search of restrooms. Heeding the prohibition against leaving bags unattended, I muscled my wheeled carry-on into one of the many stalls, latched the door, straddled the humongous bag, and grabbed for the paper seat cover dispenser. The first three paper covers ripped in half, the fourth fell into the toilet while I was trying to position it, and the fifth one disappeared when the toilet unexpectedly flushed. Those phantom flushes in automatic public toilets had always scared the you-know-what out of me, which ironically would have defeated the entire purpose of being in the toilet in the first place.
With a seat cover finally in place, I took my position.
Strangely, the otherwise noisy bathroom fell dead silent. I could see the feet of the occupants next to me, but I heard only silence. I hoped someone would turn on the sink, while my bladder refused to release the sixty-four ounces of coffee I’d consumed that morning.
I had experienced bathroom stage fright on other occasions, most notably in college when perpetually clogged bar toilets caused long lines in the bathrooms. The one working toilet usually had no toilet paper, a broken door lock, and gaps in the stall that allowed everyone in line to stare through the cracks. Once it was my turn to go, I was paralyzed.
While waiting there with my elbows on my knees, it occurred to me that travel pottying had changed significantly since I was a kid. On family trips, my dad would pull over our station wagon to the side of the road for quick pit stops. If we managed to find a gas station with a bathroom, it wasn’t worth the effort because Maz insisted on spreading half a roll of toilet paper on the seat before I was allowed to sit down. Francis had told me his family didn’t even bother to stop, because they kept a large mayonnaise container known as the “tinkle jar” in the back window of their station wagon.
But those improvised methods of yesteryear were no longer considered apropos—or sanitary for that matter. I sat there in that state-of-the-art public toilet facility, unable to go, longing for the simple practicality of a roadside patch of weeds.
At one point, I fidgeted, and—WHOOSH!—set off the phantom flusher again. It scared the bejeezus out of me—and provided the nudge my bladder needed. Relief!
The toilet paper was affixed to some type of conservation dispenser that stopped the roll at each half turn. The flimsy tissue ripped with the slightest resistance, forcing me to make several attempts—roll, stop, rip, roll, stop, rip, roll, stop, rip—until I had enough scraps to do the job.
Finally, I got up to trigger the flusher, which up until now had seemed able to react to a falling eyelash from three stalls down. However, nothing happened. I stood there, wondering if the sensor had a tiny camera inside that transmitted to a flushing control room. Had the person on duty gone to lunch? I swiveled my hips, bobbed my head, and waved my hands to no avail.
With only minutes to boarding, I gave up on flushing and left the stall. Halfway to the sinks, I heard it—WHOOSH! I imagined the flushing controller giggling over his ham and cheese.
The bank of sinks had no knobs, controls, or buttons. “Here we go again,” I thought, waving my hands in search of automated soap and water. I had a choice of hand dryers: a high-tech version powerful enough to take off my skin, or the old-fashioned kind that emits a warm breeze and eventually ends with me giving up and wiping my hands on my pants.
Frustrated with newfangled automation, I chose the latter.
Soon after takeoff, the flight attendant came by.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, secretly wondering if anyone had an empty mayonnaise jar somewhere on the plane.