Priorities

(The photo has nothing to do with the trip, but I needed something fast. That’s Renee, our family friend, standing beside a plane she helped build. It’s still on the same theme: airplanes. Good enough.)

One simply cannot run off to Europe from the United States without using the facilities. And so a blog about a vacation begins not with dreams of the Tuscan countryside or the isle of Capri, but with the potty.

The bathroom in an airplane is a marvel. Smaller than a small dining table top, every square inch is designed for efficiency; the user-friendly design positions the consumables just where the visitor might expect them: toilet tissue, soap, paper towels. The folding door offers ingress and egress using little floor space; the large mirror minimizes the feeling of claustrophobia.

I always make airplane seating decisions based on proximity to the bathroom.

Several years ago I attended a conference in Chicago. Inexplicably, my friend and colleague Bernadette and I had first-class seats on the trip back to Jacksonville. Because I assumed that first class seating came equipped with a first-class bathroom, I recklessly drank my fill of iced tea before boarding. Not until we were seated did I understand the error of my assumption.

The only bathrooms were in the rear of the plane. I, being in first class, was in the very front.

It didn’t take long for the tea to kick in.

Because no passenger can wander around the plane while the seatbelt sign is on, no matter how dire the emergency, my screaming bladder and I had to remain seated for, so it seemed, the entire flight over the state of Indiana. Such relief I felt when that blasted sign went off, only to be foiled again: the flight attendants had begun their long, slow food-service crawl down the aisle, totally blocking my pathway to the bathroom for, so it seemed, the entire flight through the state of Georgia.

Although I didn’t face public humiliation for peeing my pants on a commercial flight, trust me that I came very, very, very close that day. And so, for the eight hours it took to fly from New York to Roma, I was never more than ten happy steps away from the miniature marvel that is an airline toilet.