Pining for a Private Privy

Since we began trucking, do you know what my idea of absolute luxury is?

My own bathroom.  All to myself.  Alone.  By myself.

My bathroom at home is the ultimate.  I can walk from the bedroom to the bathroom without getting dressed, combing my hair, or talking to anyone. If there are any cooties in there, they belong to me or Himself and therefore are adorable and harmless.  I don't have to hold it for so long that I qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records for bladder and/or colon control. 


Did I mention I like to be by myself in there?

The next best thing is when we're in a truck stop or rest area where there are more stalls than people and the bathroom is the size of a football field. Although more times than not, even when I pick a stall all the way at the back, in a completely empty room and there are 373 empty stalls to choose from, some sweaty, unwashed woman will pick the stall next to mine and start talking or making heaving lifting noises.

The kind of bathroom that sounds good in theory but sucks in reality is the one-holer.  You know, the kind where you lock the door to the room and get it all to yourself?  This kind of bathroom is usually in the busiest of places, with lines of people waiting for you to finish and knocking on the door every few seconds causing your bowels to turn to concrete and leaving you unable to perform.


You know what is really fun though?  Here's what happened last week.


We are driving in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska and it hits; I gotta go.  Big time.  The next truck stop is 10 miles away, I do the kind of breathing they teach pregnant women.  Panting, the urgency subsides and I think I can make it.  


We pull into the truck stop and I see, right there by the front doors my nemesis: a porta-potty.  I think I’d rather poop out on the open prairie than go inside a cramped, stinky cootie infested porta-potty.  Plus?  It's right next to the front door so that the entire WORLD would walk by as I’m in there taking care of business.  I don't think so.

We get back in the truck and drive to the next truck stop about a mile away.  Himself drops me off in the parking lot and I run inside, bowels cramping and twisting, only to find that the ONE bathroom in the store has a handwritten sign one it that says "Knock first, the door doesn’t lock!!"  The door.  Does.  Not.  Lock.  


What fresh hell is this?

I run out of the store and back to the truck, just as Himself is backing in to park. I look up into his eyes and whimper, the door doesn’t lock.

Himself cannot be rattled.  Calmly, he tells me to get in, he’ll drive me in front a McDonald’s that we passed earlier and drop me off while he circles the block.  I concentrate every bit of willpower I can muster and direct it to my insides, praying that I can make it.  I run like Forrest Gump into the McDonald’s, my eyes focus like laser beams to the rear of the store and lock onto the target and I make it just in time.  


That’s all I have to say about that.

      *******

My intestines are twisting up, just writing about it and while I’m sure it’s not healthy to hold it for so long, I have to say my colon is pretty awesome. 

Batman kind of awesome.