Friday, January 7, 2011

little boys, bathrooms, and "what are they thinking?!?!"

so today . . . i realized i have had to put the toilet seat down more times in the last four months, than in all the rest of my life. no joke.

i am in a classroom full of boys this year. most of my classes over the years have been boy heavy, but this year the ratio is 10-4. this is also the first year i have been in a classroom with a bathroom in it. so many times, instead of using the grown-up bathroom down the hall, i will just quickly use the one in my room. when i went in there today, and lowered the toilet seat, AGAIN, i realized that this is something i have never really had to do before...

i know that in some households, the toilet seat is the focus of an ongoing battle. boys (and yes, sometimes even men) don't seem to understand the problem that a toilet seat left in the up position creates for the females in their household. that is probably because they have never gone into a bathroom at night and fallen into the open pit that is created when the seat is left up...

this has never happened to me at home. my husband is very considerate of the girls in the house, and he always returns the toilet seat to it's proper position. (i know, i am pretty lucky in the husband department.) but the little boys in my classroom have not been taught to do this. and i suppose an argument could be made that with a ratio of 10-4, the odds argue that the next person to go into the bathroom will be a boy anyway, so why put the toilet seat down?!?

i'll tell you why. because the teacher, who happens to be a girl, might go into the bathroom, in a hurry, in the semi-darkness, and have a near-death experience. that's why.

i know i should have turned on the light. i know this. but i was trying to sneak in quickly to use the facilities while the kids were lining up to go outside. the bathroom is a tiny room. i know where the toilet is located. i am perfectly capable of getting into the correct position without looking at what i am doing. and did i mention i was in a hurry?!? usually my assistant has the class lined up and ready to go in only a few minutes, so i didn't have a lot of time to waste on seemingly unimportant things like turning on the light...

and did i mention the fact that the toilet in our bathroom is child-sized? even when the seat is properly lowered, it is a loooong drop. my only consolation is that the fan in that bathroom is so loud that the kids didn't hear me yelp.

and do i even need to mention that next week we will be having a discussion about bathroom etiquette? again?!? because for some reason my little boys are not getting it. maybe it is because i only have a daughter--this whole boys using the bathroom thing is a little alien to me. i do not share their joy when two or three of them manage to sneak into the bathroom and all use the toilet at the same time! (if their communal use of the facilities wasn't accompanied by gales of laughter, they might still be getting away with it.) clearly they don't understand the concept of privacy. clearly i am not communicating in a meaningful way about this issue. clearly my bathroom is more like a locker room for 4 and 5 year old "guys."

and i am the mom. i am the one saying, "put the toilet seat down. only one at a time in the bathroom. remember to wash your hands. with soap! and don't dry them on your clothes--use a paper towel." because while the girls seem to intuitively know that the paper towels are for drying their hands (or maybe they just don't want to get their clothes wet,) the boys can't seem to be bothered--they are in too much of a hurry to get back to whatever they had to leave when the teacher (that would be me) said it was their turn to use the bathroom. and so they quickly wave their hands under the water, and then use their conveniently located clothing to dry them. and if two or three of them can manage to get in there together, well i guess they think we will all get done sooner and that means a few extra minutes of outside playtime.

and they are right. three little boys in the bathroom at once is time efficient. leaving the toilet seat up saves them a second or two. and if you can dry your barely wet hands on your clothing as you are walking out of the bathroom, you are way ahead of the game! playground, here we come...

i am beginning to think that this may be a losing battle...

2 comments:

mom said...

What a riot!! I'm sure it is a losing battle. The thing that tickles me when the boys use the restroom is that they always sing or talk to themselves while using the facilities. They squirt water at each other and there is always a ton of paper towels on the floor. They have more fun in the restroom than the girls have in theirs. The girls are in and out. The boys laugh, giggle and have a jolly good time. Using the restroom should be faster for boys than girls but not so.
Be careful not to fall in. Sounds to me like you should keep a change of clothes at school just in case...hahaha

Carroll said...

Well, I see all the training for Rollie as a little guy paid off! I didn't ever have a problem with Rollie about anything that needed to be clean. He is a clean freak! But you know that. I think by the time you have these little kids in your classroom, they're lack of training is evident. And I think it is nearly a losing battle. What's wrong with parents? But good luck with your "little talk" next week. Hang in there.
Love you!