Final Gravity

There’s something curious about being on your own for the first time in your life. It’s the dramatic launch from the nest into the world. It’s packing up your childhood room in the home where you grew up, and then moving those things to another place where you will now sleep and eat, away from your parents and all the things that you call home. It’s a pretty big deal. Yet for me it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. Moment came and went with little notice. I made my plans without really thinking. I had found a job, and I was just going to live in a new city four hours north of my home in Bedford, Texas. No big deal.

Maybe I didn’t think that I was really leaving home for good. Maybe I figured I’d be back after a year or so. I just didn’t see the moment for what it was; the beginning of my adult life. I know that my parents thought it was a big deal. On the day I left, my Dad left a letter in my car. There was a little cash for the trip and a note. He reminded me to check the oil in my car from time to time, and told me not to forget where home was. He saw the gravity of the moment because he had done the same thing over 25 years earlier when he left his home in Marion, North Carolina.

In February of 1994 I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Growing up, I knew nothing about Tulsa except that there was a TV show out of Tulsa on Sunday hosted by Oral Roberts. I knew that somewhere in Tulsa was a college campus that looked like it was straight out of Star Trek. The day I left I didn’t know that I’d spend the next 14 years there. I’d get married there. I’d buy my first home there. I’d bring my three babies home from the hospital there. I’d build my own life there.

I write all of this to try to explain the home sick feeling I’ve had for the past few weeks… after moving back to my “real” home of Bedford, Texas. At some point when you build a life somewhere different than the place you grew up the new place becomes “home.” In Tulsa I could tell you where to get the best Chinese food. I could tell you how to get anywhere in town… even the best short cuts. I could tell you where to get your Honda repaired for cheap, and where to buy guitar strings. I could tell you what the sky looks like on an October day when you’re waiting for your son to get out of school. These are all things that I am having to relearn in my home town since I moved back six months ago.

They say that it takes a year to adjust when you move to a new place. I hope that’s true because it means that I’ve only got about six more months left before I feel like I’m home again.

OK… enough blathering. It’s time to look forward, so there you go.

I hate going to the office restroom, or any other public restroom for that matter. I didn’t have this aversion when I was a kid. I could pee anywhere! I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere in my 20s I began to feel intense anxiety when forced to use public facilities. I now live in a world where I have developed a complex ritual for using the restroom when I’m at work.

In my last job there was one restroom available for the entire company. The facilities included two toilets and two urinals. With this limited arrangement I had the opportunity to observe the various restroom habits of my males colleagues. I observed four different types of folks in the office restroom: Talkers, Non-Talkers, Washers and Non-Washers. The traits can be mixed and matched, as in the Talker/Non-Washer or the Non-Talker/Washer.

Talkers intrigue me. You’re at the urinal and they walk up, unzip and enthusiastically ask how you’re doing. For the love! Leave me alone! I’m using the restroom! I don’t want to engage in small talk while I pee. Non-Talkers are better, but there’s still the awkwardness of two people standing less than eight inches from each other, staring at a wall listening to the ambient sound. The urinal duet.

The Washer/Non-Washer issue is much more disturbing to me. Non-Washers are generally older. Non-Washers are also usually Talkers. They chat it up at the urinal and then they zip up and walk out. Amazing. I never knew that so many seemingly normal people do not wash up after. Learning this has made me even more of an obsessive hand washer, and has made me even more wary of Baby Boomers.

Being in a multi-level building for my current job has made it easier for me to avoid others in the restroom. Instead of one restroom there are eight. This brings me to my restroom ritual. I am on the sixth floor and the rest of my company is on the eighth floor. In order to avoid small talk I will usually go to the seventh floor restroom when I head upstairs for meetings. Eventually I noticed that others on the eight floor use the seventh floor restroom as well, so that has sent me downstairs. The fifth floor is locked, so I have to head down to the fourth. If someone is there I will go to the third floor. I get a lot of exercise walking the stairs. I guess my neurosis isn’t all bad.

Did I mention the Stinkers, the Farters and the Readers? Maybe next time.