Toni On New York!

I’ve been using bathrooms for the better part of the last few decades, and I feel fairly confident that I know the landscape.  I’ve been a visitor to men’s rooms in fine hotels where employees in white gloves handed me a towel and offered me a spritz of cologne. And I’ve survived a few locations that were described to me as bathrooms—heck, even calling them toilets would be a stretch—that were so nauseating I still have sense memories of them.

(If you’re heading to a baseball game in Havana or a camel ride in Saudi Arabia any time soon, hit me up on Facebook and I’ll fill you in)

But in the last few weeks, I’ve learned something about bathrooms that I don’t think I ever noticed before:  they are the worst environments ever for changing a baby’s diaper.

Seriously.  If there’s no “baby changing station” (and in men’s rooms, just count on it—there probably isn’t) you are in a tough spot.

Now it goes without saying that I’d jump in front of a speeding Mister Softee truck before I’d let anything happen to my daughter—and that includes being exposed to filth in a restaurant men’s room.

So I’ve been getting peeved a lot.

One of the worst?  Going to the bathroom in a medical office building and finding no changing station (honestly, what do those things cost, anyway?  Just throw a logo for diaper cream or formula on the plastic thing and I’m sure the company will install them for nothing.  But that’d mean thinking.  And nobody thinks).

So, once again, in an environment where I was warned repeatedly about washing my hands to prevent the spread of flu, I had to choose:  put the baby on the floor or balance her on the sink?

Think about that choice:  putting your first born child onto the floor of a public restroom (albeit on layers and layers of blankets, changing pad and a few hundred toilet seat covers that, oddly enough, they DO provide) or try and balance her on the tiny amount of counter space between the sinks.

So c’mon, people.  Can we get with the program?  When I see a changing station—in a men’s room, no less—I think, what a wonderful establishment, I must remember to come here often and spend a great deal of my money!

Or something to that effect.

But seriously.  If I have to make the floor or sink choice again, I’m going to start packing a Sharpie to make some very pointed but pro-baby graffiti.

Who’s with me?

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