Straight Out of My Nightmares

And eww and every other sound of disgust you can come up with.

On our way back from Bloomington this past Sunday, we decided to stop at a gas station to use the bathroom (and get something to drink so we could use the bathroom again later in the trip) before we got to 465 where there is really no convenient way to stop.

We stopped at a Shell.

The station was fine, the gas was actually about $.10 cheaper than any of the other stations we’d seen on our trip.

The first clue should have been that one accessed the bathroom from outside the building.

The second clue should have been my disgust at having to touch the door to open it, it was grimy and gross but I figured it was from being an outside door.

No. We should have walked away, gotten in the car and driven to the CVS that was a mile away. The problem is that we didn’t know the CVS was a mile away because we had driven past all this in the dark on Friday night. We weren’t sure there was another bathroom anywhere nearby (of course there was, duh!)

Olivia and I entered with trepidation.

I caught a glimpse of the toilet and gagged. I said to Liv, “Okay. I’m going to wipe off the seat and then we’re going to hover over it to pee.”

She looked at me. She looked at the toilet. She took a step backward and declared, “No. I don’t have to pee.”

“Livie,” I started to argue.

She interrupted me. “No. I am not peeing in that. I don’t have to go.”

I remembered when she was seven and flat out refused to pee in a port-o-potty. I knew there was no arguing with her. And who wanted to at that point? I wanted to get out of that disgusting, filthy, germ-ridden bathroom.

But I had to pee.

So I took a deep breath, wrapped my hand in toilet paper (A LOT OF TOILET PAPER) and wiped the seat. There was more than just a few ‘sprinkles’ of pee on that seat. It was also evident by the, uh, color (gag!) of the samples on the seat that more than one person had peed on that seat. It was probably more like five, or hell, a hundred. It was soooo gross.

But honestly, even the pee on the seat was nothing compared to the ring around the toilet bowl itself.

My mom later said she couldn’t tell if it was the remnants of diarrhea or vomit but it was crusty. It had been there for a long, A LOOONG time. When the toilet was flushed, the water just kind of skimmed over the ring around the bowl. It might even have been mold. *shudder*

That bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in, well, maybe not ever.

The only thing that could have made it worse would have been if it had had one of those rags that hangs down in a loop, that you pull down and find a dry spot to wipe your hands. It didn’t, thank goodness, but if it had, it would have made the entire experience that much more surreal.

I hesitated to get back into my car after standing on that bathroom floor. I mean, if there was piss on the seat, you know damn well it was all over the floor.

We slathered ourselves in hand-sanitizer when we got back in the car and then we laughed over the awfulness of the entire situation. What else could we do? It was either laugh at how awful it was, or cry.

Olivia insisted she still didn’t have to pee even when we came across another, cleaner facility. Girlfriend was going to let her bladder burst before she peed in that cesspool of horror. To her credit, she didn’t use a bathroom until we were well along the way on I69 (it was the rest area between Indy and Fort Wayne, very well maintained, thank you very much.)

When we got home and told the story of the bathroom from hell, I said something along the lines of it being right out nightmares I’ve had where I have to pee so bad but the toilet is either overflowing with chunks falling to the floor in the flood of water and filth or I can’t lock a stall door and am trying to squat and hold the door at the same time.

Alyssa asked, “What kind of awful dreams are you having?!?”

Hasn’t everyone had that dream where they have to pee (because they really do have to pee but are asleep and so the need to pee translates into the dream) and they’re either in a filthy bathroom or they’re being stalked by a killer and are trying to pee really quietly but never quite empty their bladder (because, obviously, they haven’t peed in real life and so the urge doesn’t go away.)?

She (Alyssa) claims to have never had that dream. I think maybe she just doesn’t remember the times she has had it. But she did say, rather sassily, “But I probably will NOW.”

Ha, I kind of hope so because I’m that kind of mom.

For the record, I’m also the kind of mom who cleans the toilets in her house on a regular basis, so in the end, it all evens out.