Published: April 25, 2008 05:06 pm            

People who use glass bathrooms

Phil Riddle

Just when I think I’ve seen it all ...

Visit with your grandparents about how difficult things were just two generations ago. Air conditioning was a luxury, as were visits to a restaurant, and homes with more than one bathroom were considered luxurious.

Now, A/C is a necessity, most families eat out more than they dine at home and bathrooms have become an area of artistic expression.

For instance, the City of Houston recently unveiled a public water closet with a rather distinctive look. It’s made of one-way glass.

On the outside, it appears to be constructed of mirrors, reflecting pedestrian and automotive traffic up and down the street.

However, on the inside, the post-modern potty looks like a window. Anyone inside the public loo can take care of Mother Nature’s call while watching the world go by.

That would be weird.

Consider this scenario:

After a big cup of coffee and a bran muffin for breakfast, you dash into the restroom on your way to work in downtown Houston. You cruise past the reflective outside walls, then, ease inside. While looking for left-behind reading material, you spot a blinking neon sign a block down the street offering unlimited calling from your cell phone for $59.99 per month. You check the other direction and see a bicycle courier with white ear buds racing through a red light.

Then it hits you.

How is it I can see them and they can’t see me?

All of a sudden, you don’t need to go anymore.

The only exposure most of us have ever had to one-way glass was in detective scenes in the movies and on TV.

A witness in the police station gingerly points out the perpetrator of a vicious crime, all the while safe in the knowledge he or she is completely anonymous because of the sheet of one-way glass between him or her and the evil doer.

The fingered suspect looks to the mirror on the wall and begins to scream and swear at the reflecting quadrangle, giving the witness cause for worry.

“Don’t worry,” says the detective in the room, between bites of powdered sugar donuts, “he can’t see you.”

But you always wonder.

And you’ll wonder even more when you’re inside a bathroom made of the same stuff and some wise apple raps on the glass and waves.

        

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