..bathrooms

They are my phobia.  My anxiety raises whenever I go in them.  I feel like they are places where potential disaster is brooding- lots of strangers, intimate quarters, faulty equipment, wet countertops, etc.  My anxiety increases when the toilet is directly behind the door.  The possible embarrassment of  a wide door and a shocked audience is too high.  And then there is the danger of going into the wrong bathroom.  Most of my nightmares involve me walking out of a stall, washing my hands, and then seeing a urinal behind me in the mirror.  Even if no one was there to witness it I would want to die.  LOCKS!  The little hook lock that goes into the sketchy little loop does not offer very much security and causes me to only go half-time because I just want to get out while I still can. Or the punk rock lock that is made out of a bent paper clip. Really, really? Or what about the sketchy doorknob locks where you twist the dial in the middle so that the line is vertical.  Do they all have to be vertical?  Recently an evil person locked the open door to a bathroom before they left it, so I went in, placed the dial in the opposite direct, started my business and then the door opens.  The poor woman on the other side probably wet herself out of fear.  And the worst part is you can't escape- there is only one door out of the bathroom and there is a good likelihood that the victim/perpetrator is waiting on the other side.  I don't feel awkward about it but the whole situation is awkward and intrusive and falsely intimate.  I also recently had an experience where there was no lock on the bathroom door.  It was in an old house but that still not justified, people in 1920's probably needed  privacy too.  There is nothing quite as vulnerable as using the bathroom without it locked, especially in the house of a person who may one day write you a reference.  And what about bathroom stalls that have doors with bad hinges/bad locks.  You just have to slam them closed and hope with all your might that another person doesn't enter with their shoulder and that you don't have to crawl out from under the stubborn door.  I have 18 more things that terrify me about bathrooms (holding up skirts, asking strangers for toilet paper, stall-to-stall conversations, being introduced to new people in bathrooms, seeing professional/respected people you know, and others that are more private).  

The bathroom I loathe the most:  Weter. It's awful and if anything ever went wrong all of campus would be there to see.  The risk is too great.

I hate bathrooms.  If I could have one wish I would wish that I would never have to use them again.