The Gap

A significant gender gap recently came to my attention, in a rather amusing manner. One last bastion of seperation remains, public restrooms. At some point every little girl figures out that boys can pee standing up, lucky buggers. The first time we come in contact with a urinal, perhaps in a porta potty or one restroom restaurant, we are confused, but it's such an obvious object it gets noticed and explained and the mystery ends before we're old enough to be embarrassed by it.

Girls have some unique objects in their restrooms too, but they're not so obvious, and boys are mystified by them.

My dad builds in retail stores and occasionally brings extra or removed fixtures home because he can't bear to throw them in a dumpster. I love to use commercial fixtures in my home for their aesthetic and practicality. I picked up a little stall mountable garbage can off his workbench a few weeks ago and asked if I could use it in my bathroom at home. He looked at me with the glint in his eye of someone who knows a secret and said,"Do you know what that is?". This should have been my first clue. Of course I know what that is. It's the little garbage can mounted next the toilet in a bathroom stall for disposing of your feminine products.

He granted my request and I took said object home for my master bath. At last, a garbage can that hides beside the toilet and doesn't sit on the floor getting gross and/or rusty!

Usually, I pull out my own battery operated screw driver for these kind of projects. When I'm busy, and do hand them off to my husband, I usually specify exactly where I want things mounted. But this is just a little garbage can. There's only one obvious place for it and an inch or two either direction is not gonna matter, right?

My husband looked at me a little confused when I handed him the box. This should have been my second clue. I asked him to mount this garbage can in the master bathroom and he brightened up like he knew what to do. I should have known that only meant he now knew he was holding some kind of garbage can.

I went back to making dinner, and it wasn't until much later that I went back to the bathroom to discover he had mounted the mystery can up near eye level on the wall next to the medicine cabinet. The obvious place for a garbage can only big enough to put his used q-tips in. It was then that I realized, men don't have little garbage cans in every stall of their bathrooms. He had never seen one of these peculiar little fixtures before. Sure it was cool, but he couldn't imagine what it was for.

He still doesn't understand why I find this so funny, but I'm leaving it up there. By the time I decide I need to escape to the back bathroom, I'm usually in need of a good laugh. It's not his fault. It's mine for assuming. It's a little reminder of how important it is to communicate clearly and not to assume things that are obvious to you are obvious to everyone, especially across the gender gap.

It also makes me wonder what use men would put a little fold down purse shelf to, if they ever came in contact with one.