Friday, February 25, 2011
11:50 PM | Posted by
Unknown
I am student teaching at the local intermediate and high school. There aren't very many big people bathrooms, so occasionally I am forced to use the boys bathroom nearest my classroom. Wow, how does one describe such a modern marvel? To begin with, this restroom is used primarily by the 7th and 8th graders. That should get your mental train headed in the right direction.
When you enter the bathroom you can't help but notice that the clumsily-placed-and-cracked tiles pasted to the cement walls are a pale dirty yellow color. This helps to camouflage the puddles and streams of bodily fluids standing and creeping across the floor in the most inconvenient places, like right where you need to stand. As you walk to the back of the room where the standing contraptions are (it is, after all, a men's room) you have to pass three open-doored stalls. The fourth is always closed, and I have never braved the opening of that door. The three toilets in these open stalls are usually filled with what is all over the floor. It seems that boys don't learn to flush (or hit) toilets until a much later age. Upon reaching the destination at the back of the room the puddles and streams become particularly unsavory, and somehow darker and full of indefinable matter. But that doesn't really matter, since you have to stand in it anyway. Unfortunately the urinals are also filled with matter. Sometimes it is just nuts from the trees outside, but usually it is wads of chewing gum or fistfuls of paper towels. Personally I would like to know where they get the paper towels, as I can never find any in either of the two dispensers in the bathroom.
The "Mirror" is of the Egyptian variety, a cheap sheet of metal that has been polished so that you can vaguely make out your own form. There is a sink, stark and bare, with no soap or disinfectant available, as well as a trough made of stainless steel with three spigots for washing hands. This must have been made by the same manufacturer of the mirror as it is of the same material.
This lack of sanitation is all highly amazing to me as I know for a fact that the custodians come in and clean that restroom every afternoon after school. The state I find it in has come to be between 8:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. - every day. I do not envy those brave custodians.
As I leave the bathroom I am feeling more than one kind of relief. As I walk back to my classroom I try to focus on what lies ahead, and not on the fact that I am trying not be too obvious that I am scraping my feet on the grass as I walk away from the restroom.
When you enter the bathroom you can't help but notice that the clumsily-placed-and-cracked tiles pasted to the cement walls are a pale dirty yellow color. This helps to camouflage the puddles and streams of bodily fluids standing and creeping across the floor in the most inconvenient places, like right where you need to stand. As you walk to the back of the room where the standing contraptions are (it is, after all, a men's room) you have to pass three open-doored stalls. The fourth is always closed, and I have never braved the opening of that door. The three toilets in these open stalls are usually filled with what is all over the floor. It seems that boys don't learn to flush (or hit) toilets until a much later age. Upon reaching the destination at the back of the room the puddles and streams become particularly unsavory, and somehow darker and full of indefinable matter. But that doesn't really matter, since you have to stand in it anyway. Unfortunately the urinals are also filled with matter. Sometimes it is just nuts from the trees outside, but usually it is wads of chewing gum or fistfuls of paper towels. Personally I would like to know where they get the paper towels, as I can never find any in either of the two dispensers in the bathroom.
The "Mirror" is of the Egyptian variety, a cheap sheet of metal that has been polished so that you can vaguely make out your own form. There is a sink, stark and bare, with no soap or disinfectant available, as well as a trough made of stainless steel with three spigots for washing hands. This must have been made by the same manufacturer of the mirror as it is of the same material.
This lack of sanitation is all highly amazing to me as I know for a fact that the custodians come in and clean that restroom every afternoon after school. The state I find it in has come to be between 8:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. - every day. I do not envy those brave custodians.
As I leave the bathroom I am feeling more than one kind of relief. As I walk back to my classroom I try to focus on what lies ahead, and not on the fact that I am trying not be too obvious that I am scraping my feet on the grass as I walk away from the restroom.
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