by Joni Cunningham

Created on: June 03, 2011

I Must Need a Vacation

I think I’m losing it.  This week has been from hell, but when I walked in to the restroom at work today; for a moment it brought a flashback of the beach long ago.

It’s weird I know.  I must share with you, after all what good are stories when you don’t tell them?

Let’s get back to the restroom.   When I first walked in the heat was what I noticed first; it hit me right in the face.  The large old brick building I work in has tall windows that let a lot of sunshine in and when the weather is warm, it feels like a terrarium.

Today was about 95, and for the mountains that is pretty hot.  There’s just a smell you get when you walk into a “hot” bathroom.  Not necessarily dirty, just “bath roomy” if that makes sense.

Maybe it’s a combination of a damp steamy feel, bathroom cleaner and coconut hand soap sort of thing.  For an instant, I remembered walking into the public bathrooms on the beach.

Those bathrooms on the beach must have been built in the 60’s. I remember the speckled turquoise and various blue tiles on the floor, which had a drain near the middle.  There was always the grainy sand on the floor that you walked across with flip flops, and a lot of times there weren’t doors on the stalls.

Occasionally you might jump in the curtain less shower just to cool down and rinse the sand off.  The water would always be tepid, like from a garden hose.   I wished on many occasion the water would be icy.

 In those old beach bathrooms there would usually be an abandoned colorful beach towel lying in the floor near the corner, and plastic shovel on the counter that someone rinsed out and forgot.  Sometimes a bikini top or bottom would be accidentally dropped when someone changed, and a passer by would hang the lost piece over the side of a stall.

 The walls were usually bland, and the mirrors bad.  The beach is not a place of etiquette.  I was never surprised at the hodgepodge people that kept the relaxed atmosphere of the beach alive.

Often just outside the bathroom door would be a raft and maybe a beach chair or umbrella propped up waiting for the owner to return.

I’ve never failed to see a dirty diaper and few chicken bones spilling out of a KFC box in the trash; contributing to the ambiance of the public beach bathroom.

Most of the younger men wore cut off jeans in those days, the

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