What the heck is all this stink about the toilets in North Carolina anyway? It seems you can't pick up a newspaper these days (I won't mention which is my favorite room in our house where I retreat to read the sports section), turn on the flat-screen talking heads, or come within earshot of the coffee-addled corner-booth oracles at McDonald's and not read, see, or hear something about those North Carolina toilets.
I remember back in simpler times when "going" in a public toilet was a simple matter of privacy and convenience, and not a politically charged major event. Or, if you are like me these days, more a matter of urgency than convenience. I can't tell you how many times Joanne and I have screamed down the exit ramp of some I-40 rest stop, screeched the Corolla to a Burt Reynolds sideways stop, and bolted for the restrooms. Engine still running. Both doors wide open. The incessant ding-ding-ding of the "door ajar" alarm alerting every carjacker within 20 miles that my wallet and Joanne's purse, prominently displayed on the dashboard, were ripe for harvesting. All of our McDonald's gift cards were in jeopardy.
So let's face it, at some point since '08 or '09 some big-mouth politician or some big-mouth religious nut engineered a social crisis that does not exist. And the poor folks in North Carolina get to be the victims of the feeding-frenzied media clambering over this frivolous social-engineering meddling.
The way I understand it, I am now supposed to fear for my heterosexual soul every time I enter a public toilet. Quiver with trepidation because roving bands of malicious transgender people are lurking within. Slithering in the shadows, waiting for their opportunity to, oh--I don't know, maybe force me to listen to them flush a urinal or commode. Or (shudder!) actually watch them wash their hands. I mean, it's not like they are going to engage me in any serious philosophical conversation about their sexual identity.
When is the last time that you struck up a public restroom conversation with some sleep-deprived, pot-bellied truck driver wearing four-day-old blue jeans and an AC/DC T-shirt? Probably a long time, I'm guessing. Except for the cacophonous, never-ending cascading flushing and the industrial-grade wind-tunnel hand dryers that can rip off your fingernails, the public toilets I've been in are usually not buzzing with social discourse. You just go in, shut up, do your business, and get out. If you really want to worry about your health and welfare in a public toilet, then be very, very scared of the thousands of diseases, viruses, plagues, and medically unidentified maladies lurking in every nook and cranny (okay--I'll go for the cheap shot--in every crack) behind those closed doors.
It is not like transgenders have just been created by scientists in some secret gubmint lab developing genetically modified organisms from snippets of DNA strands. They have been with us for as long as the 30,000 genes in 46 chromosomes have been dancing around in unimaginable nucleotide sequences at a remarkably high rate of accuracy. Sometimes they might get just a little jumbled. Not unlike me dancing at the VFW with Joanne. She's learned to wear combat boots when we jitterbug. You try taking a cookie cutter and making 30,000 cookies. A few of them may not be the chocolate chip you hoped for. Maybe one or two macaroons will slip in here and there.
I remember Sid Caesar and Henny Youngman generating raucous laughter and thunderous applause over this issue as they performed their edgy shtick on Ed Sullivan. Except the zeitgeist dictated that they use terms like transvestite or cross-dresser. Who doesn't remember Milton Berle hobbling in heels and dressing in drag (and being chided over how much he ostensibly enjoyed it)? Fred Mertz oftentimes donned Ethel's house dress and turban on I Love Lucy when he was doing his weekly housecleaning. My own father, the prince of the WASPs, tsar of testosterone, would rock in his recliner and howl at all of them, his manhood (and morals) unchallenged.
I know, I know. Before you go and get your knickers in a knot, the other purportedly more serious side to this issue is that legions of sexual predators and perverts will somehow materialize to take advantage of the transgender issue and loiter in the partitioned public restroom stalls and violate your privacy.
Well, folks (spoiler alert), sexual predators and interloping, opportunistic perverts are like the IRS--they're everywhere. Always have been. You have probably washed your hands standing next to one in some airport restroom. The IRS agent, that is. Err ... no ... make that the pervert. Hell, you probably had one on both sides.
So, let's all stop and take a deep breath and think about this. Next time that you are squatting in that public restroom steel-partitioned stall, door securely locked, doing your business, just remember you are probably more at risk from trans fat than a transgender.
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Bill Rausch is a freelance writer from Little Rock. Email him at williamrausch25@yahoo.com.
Editorial on 06/25/2016