Permission to Use the Bathroom
Notes from the Prairie: I Wonder # 23
“May I use your bathroom?” asked a regular visitor to our home.
“Of course,” I said. I pointed in its direction from the dining area where we were playing Hearts. “It’s the first door on the right.”
Scraping cake crumbs from plates to trash after our guests have left, I wonder, Why did she permission to use the bathroom? She knew I would say yes. No host wants to risk a distraught guest with wet pants and a puddle on the chair or floor.
Perhaps it is not a request. I suppose this frequently asked question may have an unspoken subtext.
Loading glasses into the dishwasher, I wonder more. Did she want to be sure it was presentable before she used it? I don’t think so. Part of my preparation ritual for a group of guests is to clean the guest bathroom. I suppose the other card-group hosts do the same.*
Could it be an indirect way of learning where the bathroom is? No. Even when guests know my bathroom’s location, they ask permission.
However, my children and grandchildren don’t ask permission to use the bathroom. They walk over and use it.
Before an event in someone else’s home Marlo and I use our bathroom at home. If we are attending after a church meeting, we use the public bathroom there. We have an unspoken reluctance to use someone’s home bathroom. Why?
“Donde está el baño?” (Where is the bathroom?) is the first Spanish phrase I learned before visiting Nicaragua. But no one taught me to ask permission to use this room.
Then again, tourists don’t usually enter private homes. Homes are different from public spaces.
Another memory rises. In a different small group, when friends and I saw the impeccable Christmas decorations in a well-appointed home, we suggested she offer her home for Pella’s Christmas Tour of Homes. Her face brightened at our suggestion. But when she learned the public tour would include the bathrooms and second floor bedrooms, she immediate said no.
I also recall my discomfort when a spur-of-the moment a tour in the home of strangers, included the bedroom and bathroom. This space seemed somehow private.
Privacy! That’s the key. I suppose part of US culture might be considering some spaces in our homes more private than others. I search the internet. I learn that we do indeed have private and less private rooms.
Most private: bedrooms and bathrooms.
Semi-private: home offices and laundry room.
Semi-public: family rooms and kitchens.
Most public: living rooms and dining rooms.
I ponder on. When I ask only where bathrooms are, I am in public buildings as a tourist. My family members don’t need to ask permission, because they are part of our private circle. Friends and acquaintances are not.
The next morning while using my bathroom, I finally make a discovery: when people ask permission to use our bathroom, they actually mean, “I know I will be entering a more private space, and I acknowledge that.”
The exchange is simply a courtesy ritual, similar to “How Are You?” **
My inner Discovery Lover wants to shout my insight to the world like Archimedes. As a scientist in ancient Greece, when he finally understood buoyancy while standing up from his bathroom tub, he ran through the streets shouting, “Eureka! I have found it!” The legend says he forgot he was naked.
I clap my hand over my Discovery Lover’s mouth.
She is still shouting when I tie her to the toilet, without a single word of ritual courtesy.
*Read about discovering “supposing” here.
**Read about subtext of “How Are You?” here.
Carol Van Klompenburg is a writer living in Pella, Iowa. She has a BA in English and an MA in Theater Arts, and she is available for reading performances of her work. Her email address is carolvk13@gmail.com. Her website can be found here.
Her latest book, A World in a Grain of Sand: Lively Little Stories of Household Stuff, is available in Pella from Carol or from Pella’s Curiosity Shop. It can also be ordered from Amazon. Readers are calling it “stirring,” “winsome,” and “delightful.”