to poo or not to poo? that is the question.

Today I'd like to discuss something that has been bothering me for most of my adult life.

 

During my lifetime I have visited numerous public restrooms. 

 

I have been to the awful smelling restrooms at football games and wondered how a room

with open windows could possible manufacture such an odor.

 

 I have been to hospital restrooms that smelled so strongly of disinfectant that it

 burned my eyes and yet it didn't quite mask that same odor

 I smelled at the football restroom.

 

 I have been to service station bathrooms that would gag a maggot. 

 

Movie theater bathrooms usually smell of  burned popcorn.

 

The bathroom at my daughter's orthodontist smelled like a

 super strand

 of grape potpourri.

 (I've never understood how anyone ever came up with a grape scent.

 I've never eaten grapes that had much odor.  Do the grape smell test in the privacy of your own home. You can get funny looks in public. Just saying) 

 

I've been to elementary school bathrooms in my tender single-digit years that smelled like that oily red stuff they would sprinkle on wet stuff (mainly wet stuff like puke, vomit, throw-up; whatever you want to call it) and in my double-digit years the high school bathrooms smelled like an old lady's powder puff. I think the high school smell was a combination of  hair spray, cologne, deodorant, etc. mixed with the you-know-what smell. 

 

The bathrooms at my church smell nice. (The lady that cleans uses a Renuzit fragrance that I like.)

 

 I've been to the bathroom at the IGA in my hometown and it is always clean and smells OK. 

 

Chinese restaurant bathrooms for some reason always smell not exactly sour,

 but more like they never rinse the mops. 

 

The restrooms at Mexican restaurants are usually clean, but it almost always has only one toilet. (it's like they don't know what Mexican food does to the digestive system of the majority of Americans.) 

 

 The old police station bathroom I visited smelled like old wood and Pine-Sol.

(No, you may not ask how I came to find this out.) 

 

But my quandary is this: Why, in a public restroom,  can we ladies tee-tee and not poo-poo and toot?  How did we as American women evolve into ladies who could tee-tee in a stall next to a friend or complete stranger and never give it a thought; after all it is a natural biological function and everybody does it.  However, it is a major, major, major faux pas to let out a tiny bubble of gassy air or a little poo-poo. Who got to decide this was a no-no? I have spent a few painful moments waiting for a restroom to empty  (and you can wait forever for a WalMart bathroom to empty.) 

I bet men don't have these problems.