Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Anatomy (And The) 101

We, 35 and 34, finished potty-training Anna Claire, 3, just in time for a spring break trip to southern California. After five straight days of airplane toilets, public restrooms, and port-o-johns, I'm strongly considering having all of us switch back to diapers.

Heading up the 101 during rush hour Monday night, Anna Claire made it clear she needed to use the facilities. Being new to this routine, she remains under the impression that sanitary lavatorial options are always at hand.

(Helpful travel tip: references to freeways in SoCal generally include both a noun marker, e.g. the 101 or the PCH, and copious profanity, "Go, @#$%&*! This isn't a @#$%&* parking lot, it's the @#$%&* 405!")

So we pulled off the next exit, which just so happened to be Sunset Boulevard where everyone who's anyone in Hollywood has gone pee pee or, in the case of Hugh Grant, worse. There are roughly 10 million people in L.A., 10 million of which are likely to be found on Sunset Boulevard at any given moment, many of them behaving rather roughly. Turns out Anna Claire is not the first person to find herself in urgent need of a public potty. Which explains why the McDonald's/Starbucks/coin-op laundromat where we alighted had only a single uni-john. It had a lock that required a quarter to open and a sign that read,

"THIS RESTROOM IS OWNED BY ALL OF THE COMPANIES IN THIS BUILDING."

After an initial peek and whiff, I felt compelled to scribble the postscript,

"...AND CLEANED BY NONE OF THEM."

That was a week ago, and none of us has contracted anything that a coupla rounds of antibiotics won't cure. But beware. The next time you need to do #2 on the 101, you might want to avoid Sunset and wait for a less noxious exit. Like Portland.

6 comments:

RPorche said...

Thanks for the laugh. I'm sorry I missed the excitement! Wait, no I'm not.

RPorche said...
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RPorche said...
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Joel said...

You were on the @#$%&*! 101 last week? I was on the @#$%&* 405. Read my post at joelquile.blogspot.com (shameless plug)
What a small world.
It's a world of pee and world of poop, a world of salad a world of soup. Every fence has a picket and every joke has a cricket, it's a small world after all.

Didn't know Portland was an exit either.

Guatorean Daddy said...

After seeing your blog mentioned on other sites, I wanted to check it out. Needless to say, I'm glad I did.

Corey said...

It's amazing how much poop there really is in Southern California. I bet your kids loved it.

Next time take Nicholas to Muscle Beach to let him see World's Strongest Man wanna-bes. That should scare him plenty.

Will miss hearing you on PGA.com this week. In fact, I am boycotting the "Live at 17" internet feed as a personal protest. I'm sure they would be crushed to know that I, the worst golfer on the planet, am making a stand. Wouldn't they?