Bathrooms and Bathing Suits......

Disclaimer:  If you are male, you probably won’t get/appreciate this as much as the women will.  Feel free to read it anyway if you want to.

Pat and I had signed up for a day trip when our cruise ship docked in Freeport Harbour (details on our cruise in a future blog post).  It included a bus tour of historic sites on Grand Bahama Island, a nature hike, and a guided snorkeling trip.  We arrived at the meeting point early (those of you who know us well are not at all surprised by this!); so, I decide I have plenty of time to go to the bathroom before the tour starts.  I’m wearing a one-piece swim suit with a t-shirt and capri pants over it and tennis shoes.  Oh, and prescription sunglasses.  I’m pleasantly surprised that the bathroom itself looks fairly new and clean; however, neither stall has a working lock.  Not really a problem, it's a really small stall and I’ll just hold the door shut from the inside with my hand.  I’m usually pretty good about checking out the toilet paper situation before I use the toilet; however, this restroom was dark (no lights, just filtered day light through tinted windows) and I couldn’t take off my prescription sunglasses if I wanted to be able to see anything at all.  Anyway, I neglected to check out the TP situation. 

Now the biggest problem with one-piece bathing suits is going to the bathroom.  You can either take your top off (and figure out what the heck to do with it) and then drop both your pants and your swim suit (risking them both ultimately landing on a bathroom floor with who knows what on it) or just pull down your pants (as usual) and hold the crotch of the swim suit to one side with your hand.  I prefer the second method.  So, I use the facility and look around and don’t see any TP.  Remember, now it’s really dark because the door has blocked most of the light and I still have my sunglasses on!  Finally locate it on a shelf behind the toilet.  However, both of my hands are occupied (holding swim suit and holding door); so I stick one foot out to hold the door, and reach around behind me for the TP.  Since my two back surgeries, twisting around is not the easiest thing in the world in best of circumstances.  Of course, I knock the first roll off onto the floor; but do manage to barely snag the second (final) roll with my fingertips.  So now I’ve got one foot holding the door, one hand holding the roll of TP, and the other hand holding my swim suit.  No way to unroll any TP.  Finally stick the roll of TP under my chin and use my now free hand to gingerly unroll it which was difficult because by now I’ve kind of started to laugh as I realize how really ridiculous this is!  So now I’ve used the toilet paper, but still have the roll under my chin, can finally let go of my swim suit and take my foot off the door which then frees up a hand to put the toilet paper back.  By now, I’m flat out laughing.  Do not ask me why I didn’t just let the door swing open; I’m not all that modest and it was just a two stall bathroom.  AND during the entire time, I was the only person in there!  It just never occurred to me.

So I walk out shaking my head and rolling my eyes and Pat’s first question was, “What took you so long?”  I just burst out laughing and continue to laugh every time I think about it!