Rush to get ready, grab a cup of coffee, rush to the airport, rush to get through security, rush to get to the gate.
Time out. Ladies’ room.
Sitting there, I find my first chance to simply breathe a bit more calmly. My first chance of the day to collect myself, to think.
Then I realize that the person in the next stall is not collecting herself. She’s breathing anything BUT calmly and little thinking is going on.
I look down to my right and notice her foot in its sandal twitching, sliding sideways, then … stopping … toes curling. Uncurling. Slowly receding from view.
Now, I have more need than ever to collect myself. I’m not normally a voyeur, but imagining what was happening next to me was making my morning a bit complicated, again.
Then…a hand, under the partition. A hand offering me a tube of something with a note attached. I took the tube and began to read. As I read, I heard the sounds of the person in the next stall leaving quickly, leaving the rest room without stopping to arrange herself, fix her face, even wash her hands.
The tube read: “This is a personal lubricant with more. Warning: it may only be used once, and then must be given, and received, by another woman. The product is perfectly safe, and remarkably effective, but can be dangerous in many ways to the woman who chooses to use it a second … or more … time. Having accepted it, you may not rid yourself of this product until you have used it. Once. It will have no effect whatsoever upon any non-genital tissue.”
Bah. I’m not using ANYTHING that comes to me from under the stall of a public rest room. I slipped the tube and note into the feminine hygiene receptacle and left the rest room.
As I sat on the plane, looking out over the receding city of Houston, I reached into my purse to get my chapstick. Looking in, I saw the tube. The note.
Later, when it came time to use the rest room again, I tore up the note and flushed it. I squeezed the gel out of the tube into the sink and threw the empty tube into the waste paper basket. But, when I arrived back at my seat and after quickly checking my purse, the tube, and the note, were there again. As full as before.
I gasped, and the woman sitting in the seat one removed from me looked at me with concern. “Did you lose something? Is there something wrong?”
“No, no. I just realized that I forgot something. But, it’s ok. I’ll make do.”
I began to think about my situation. All that I knew was that I wasn’t going to get rid of this tube without using it. If, as I thought, the woman in the next stall at the airport had just used the contents of the tube, it couldn’t be all that bad. She certainly seemed to be enjoying herself.