Silent Tears

So this morning I am in the bathroom at work changing from workout Amaretto to I got bills to pay Amaretto when I hear a woman walk into the bathroom sniffling. Now I have to share that I was in the handicap stall because it’s larger and has a mirror and sink and as a whole handicap stalls make the public bathroom experience so much better. And so I wonder why all stalls can’t be handicap stalls? Why limit the disabled? Why punish the non-handicapped with a coffin-like bathroom experience? Sorry-I am just typing what randomly is coming into my head, but I do think I need to write someone and propose that all bathroom stalls be handicapped stalls!

Anyways, I also realized while typing that I didn’t really need to let ya’ll know that I was in the handicapped stall, but I wanted you two fine readers of the 5 spot to know why I was so a tuned to what was going on in the bathroom. A disabled person will cuss you out for using their stall. No bull-my grandma learned that the hard way when walking out of a handicapped stall there was a lady in a wheelchair waiting. What is the likelihood right? But if all the stalls had been able to accommodate a wheelchair my grandma would not have had to apologize so vehemently to a woman half her age. But we live and we learn!

Anyways I’m in the stall and I keep hearing the woman sniff. At first I was like she has a cold. But as it continued my mind flashed to movie scenes in which people are doing lines of cocaine in the bathroom, but most folks in my building are getting government wage to go with their good government job which means that they can’t afford the designer drugs. So then I hear the woman say “Oh God’ *sniffle* “Oh God” *whimper* *sniffle* and that is the moment where I was conflicted… should I ask the woman if she was okay?

I think most of us know what to do when a person needs help. A person’s bag of groceries breaks and food falls to the ground-we stop and we help-maybe take an apple for our troubles. When our bathroom neighbor needs some toilet tissue we spare the square © Elaine from Seinfeld. But when our bathroom neighbor enters the stall to have a personal breakdown should we ask them if they are okay?

Now I have to tell ya’ll that this thing called life has had me in the bathroom crying more than a river. I mean even though I might have tried as hard as I could to hold back the tears or to blame my reddening eyes on allergies, some times a girl (I don’t know if men feel the same) has to get up and go into the ladies room. But this morning, I didn’t know what my role should have been as a hearer of tears. I don’t think I would have appreciated someone trying to console me in the bathroom during my weak moments. A woman crying in a bathroom stall is there because she needs a private place to not be strong for a minute.

I think I did the right thing by walking out, but hours later I am wondering if maybe I should I have asked if she was okay or needed a tissue. What is the proper procedure for when a fellow woman feels disabled by life?

See You In Seven