When complete strangers say, "I wouldn't go in there ... we're guys and we won't even use it", it wasn't a real comfort to my wife who was in desperate need of a restroom. We were on our way home from Spirit West Coast Monterey, stuck in traffic with very few options when I spotted a gas station. The joy of finding a place to stop was quickly tempered when we learned the gas station had no public restrooms, but instead had two port-a-potties - one of which was locked and the other one came with the disclaimer from the two strangers. But then someone else told us, "hey, they are not that bad - they were just hosed down". Not cleaned, mind you - "hosed down"! Somehow that didn't make my wife feel better.
God bless my father-in-law, who was also traveling with us, because he did his best to strategically place those brown paper towels to make the bathroom in a box a bit more useable. Meanwhile, I'm snapping pictures and twittering them. Thankfully my wife has an amazing sense of humor and was able to laugh at the craziness of the situation. I think she was also just thankful that we found somewhere to stop, too.
Being thankful for little things like finding a bathroom and the ability to laugh at having to use a grotesque port-a-pottie, are small perspective builders and remind us that things could be a whole lot worse. You see, not 10 minutes later, the car my wife was driving was rear-ended by a driver not paying attention, causing a three-car crash. Thank God no one was seriously hurt. As we analyzed all aspects of the accident, we realized a few small things here or there could have made the accident much worse. Scary bad. Makes having to use a nasty bathroom not seem like such a big deal.
