The Potty Post

Strange things make me wonder. When I last flew several years ago, it seemed that all the old folks in wheelchairs and walkers and the whole shebang were loaded up first. It took them over 10 minutes to load six people and I wondered if there were a fire, would anybody make it out? I'm hardly a "survival of the fittest" kind of person, but I question the wisdom of allowing so many physically handicapped people to use a plane at once if there aren't good ways to get them in and out of the plane QUICKLY. It's a safety issue. (I'm not saying no handicapped people should fly. Just maybe not so many on one flight! Or have a few rows without standard seats in which you bolt the chairs to the floor like they do on the handicap busses, and wider aisles so you can just scoot these folks out fast! Just askin' for some common sense.)

Now I'm wondering how they would EVER be able to use the potty. The wheelchair doesn't even go up the aisles, so people who can't take a few steps can't get on the plane in the first place unless someone carries them. I guess people in wheelchairs don't have families to travel to and never need to use the restroom. Well, good for them! :)

No, seriously, planes are an extreme example, but almost no business has accessable anything. Try clothes shopping sometime at a department store. Could you imagine getting between the clothes racks and looking around? Even stores built within the last few years allow for practically zero room between the racks. Aisles that are carefully constructed to allow wheelchairs to go through are clogged with rolling sales racks. And the bathroom, you have to open a really heavy door to get in WHILE you are going round a corner. Imagine yourself unable to move from the waist down and sitting in a chair. You can't open the door and get in, can you?

I don't know that I agree with forcing businesses to make things "handicap accessible" and spending zoodles of dollars, especially if it does no blinking good for people who really need the chair to get around. By the way, I weigh something like 468 pounds (well, maybe 458 but am using the upper end of my weight to make a point) and I cannot get into the stall, turn and shut the door. I have to use the handicap stall or I won't be able to fit without getting toilet water on my hiney when I stand up. By the way, automatic flushers are JUST WRONG! You can't stand and get away in time without getting splashed in the small stalls! And too bad for you if you don't like seeing me hold my skirts around my stomach when I exit; I am not letting my skirts touch the potty, so I will hold them next to my body until I clear the stall AND the splash area. Man. Who needs Sea World when I can get splashed every day at Wal-Mart for free? Eew.

As noted in the previous paragraph, I am fat. Deal with it or I will squash you. But I must say it is absolutely WRONG of some of these folks to use the Wal-Mart automated chairs IN the restroom! If you're that stinkin' handicapped, you should have a chair of your own that doesn't take up six feet by three feet. Wal-Mart (God bless 'em) is providing those chairs as a COURTESY because their store is so large, and they know some people get tired of walking all that way. Please have the COURTESY not to take them into the restroom and run over the toddlers there. It's 20 steps. You took at least that getting into the building before plunking your fat self on the chair. Courtesy, people.

I dunno. I think we can ask for some courtesy in the design of these businesses, too. Does anybody actually use the tiny stalls if there isn't a line and a real need to go?