I have 11-year-old and 14-year-old daughters that share a bathroom. People. What you are about to read is going to be the definition of First World Problems, so I’m laying that out there right now. In a Perfect First World I have a house with 6 bathrooms so no one has to EVER encounter each other or negotiate a bathroom routine. (For the record, I also have 6 maids that clean those bathrooms and they never have to encounter or negotiate with one another either.)
There are 24 hours in a day, but my children always want to use the bathroom for the exact same 45 minutes.
But I live in an Imperfect First World. Which means my children share a bathroom and every day I live through the logical equivalent of Kim Jong-un declaring sarcasm verboten. First, there are 24 hours in a day, but my children always want to use the bathroom for the exact same 45 minutes. No, they cannot wait. No, there is nothing else they need to do while they are forced to wait. It is as if one of them being in the shower both a) makes the other one need to use the toilet right now and b) makes the other bathrooms in our home inaccessible. Seriously, anyone that thinks girls do not have a tendency to take out their frustrations physically has never seen a 14-year-old armed with a pair of tweezers and a 6 panel door vs. her little sister armed with a big toe in the door jam and “I’ll tell mom if you do it!!”
Even on a good day the sheer amount of hormones swirling around the small square footage is enough to make a grown man (that would be my husband) run for cover. I don’t know if he is afraid that getting too close to the door will launch him back into adolescence personally or if he is just concerned he might get hurt. I mean, they do have hot irons in there. Also, he is in denial about them growing older and if he goes in there he might encounter something really scary – like a bra.
Have I mentioned that they also have enough lotions and potions in there I sometimes worry that in their quest to rid themselves of pimples and stray hairs they might actually turn into pinkish-purple versions of The Hulk? We have cream to straighten our hair, cream to make it curly, spray that makes it “beachy”, detangler, conditioners -regular, spray, lotion, rinse-out, leave-in – shampoos, hair sprays, gels, pastes….I could go on and on and on and…. Okay, you get the point. We haven’t even touched what is required to make our faces presentable.
One day my Imperfect First World House will not have a bathroom full of products and angsty children vying for real estate. I am sure to miss my children while they are gone, but I have a feeling I might stare happily at the quiet and clean bathrooms!
