MODERN HYGIENE IN A NASCAR ANTI-TERRORIST BATHROOM

We all have moments of public embarrassment, when we're caught looking, or not looking. Then, red-faced and mortified, and feeling like the only true dumb animal of the mammalian family, we skulk away.

Come, come ... you've done it, when you've:

Tripped over a sidewalk crack and stared back in indignation at the offending fissure, as if it had widened for you personally. If your tumble had a strong slapstick element, you even go back and kick the spot. You do this only if your clumsiness was well-witnessed, because everyone simply must know that your tangle-footed flub resulted from a chunk of conspiratorial concrete with your name on it. Not your fault.

Set your hair on fire. This one's for any female smoker with a new perm, (one of whom I know intimately, and vouches for this) idly sitting and chatting with a companion at an outdoor coffee bar, and who is prone to emphasizing a point with her hands. She ignites her new do, and her well-intentioned waiter / rescuer leaps and smothers it with her own tablecloth.

Spoken out of turn in malapropisms. These may be the worst humiliations, because there is immediately at least an implied public consensus that our brains are mis-wired. The connection is too direct, and there's no locomotion to hide behind.

It's one thing to forget that we're sitting in reverse at Wal-Mart, and instead of a graceful forward exit, we back into the shopping cart corral. In that case, we can blame the ill-designed vehicle's quirks, or Wal-Mart, for stupidly installing said corral so close to our parking place.

But, the act of speaking leaves us no retreat. When George Bush said: "We can't let terrorists hold this nation hostile," not even Karl Rove could re-bottle the genie. Or, when state legislator Gib Lewis rose to his feet to denounce a proposed bill, and proclaimed: "This is unparalyzed in our state's history," he also moved from genie to low order of genus homo.

My favorite was the NASCAR driver, (I'll spare you naming him here) speaking of the sport's new safety requirements, saying in a pre-race interview: "We've had to make some altercations to the seat."

I waited for the uproar, but when not one reporter demanded to know why he had to duke it out with his upholstery, my embarrassment for him shifted to them.

I felt for the guy, but I wouldn't want him, or them, delivering the urology at my funeral. At any speed.

Lastly, as if this column needed an excretory closing segue, my most recent public faux pas came in a new restaurant's bathroom, where I found myself standing at the sink alone, about to wash my hands. There was a sink, a gooseneck faucet and adjacent soap dispenser ... and nothing else. No taps. No hot or cold handles. No way to turn the water on or dispense the soap.

I pushed down and pulled up on the big & little goosenecks. I attempted to slide them sideways. I looked for vanity-top push-buttons and checked underneath for foot pedals. No pull-chains, no keyholes, no cranks. I stood there, unwashed up, wondering what idiot designed such a crazy privy with the Three Stooges plumbing. Just wait 'til I gave the new owners an earful.

I then made the mistake of wondering this aloud to a gentleman who'd exited a stall and was approaching me at the sink:

"What idiot designed this? Moe, Larry or Curly? There's no way to get any water!" I demanded.

Looking astonished, he approached me cautiously, silently --- as if worldwide terrorism had invented a new toiletries bomb and I was its first mad agent --- and swept his hand underneath the faucets.

The water and liquid soap immediately began running, and I stood there amazed and wishing I did have an explosive toiletry. I'd have detonated it and taken him with me in a blast of bubbles, if only to rid myself of the one guy who could testify to my cultural impasse.

"It's automatic," he said, looking at me with a lesser degree of suspicion and a rapidly developing bemusement, when it was clear I was in earnest, and not a bathroom bomber. "Same over here," he added, waving his hand at the paper towel dispenser, which ground out a single towel.

So, we've arrived, terrifyingly, at the touchless, wireless public bathroom, where one can now perform a host of bodily functions without directly engaging a fixture. Shouldn't this 21st Century anti-terrorism upgrade have been announced somewhere?

It's more than a sitting man can stand, at least until I make some altercations to the seat.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.