Ladies, it has come to my attention that women and girls between the ages of 6 and around 75 have an issue that needs to be addressed. This issue has to do with the bathroom. I�m noticing that when women go use the facility in a public place that they have established a strange usage ritual. I don�t know when or why I began this behavior myself but it has got to stop. Men, if you don�t know what I�m talking about please read on and become a little more enlightened regarding the opposite sex.

I am speaking of a devious little trick that some females do to keep from having to be the �first� one to, ahem, carry on with their business in a public bathroom. Usually what happens is once everyone is settled in their individual places to do whatever it is they need to do and then...they wait. There has been a holding pattern mentality established amongst women where it seems that they don�t want to be the first one to make the noises that one would make in a bathroom so they wait for noises from another person to �signal� that all is right with the world.

It is a strange phenomenon that I have myself taken part in. I have sat in a bathroom and waited for everyone to leave because I didn�t feel that they were making adequate noise with talking, faucets, etc. to not notice me peeing. I don�t know if women are concerned that under stress, other unauthorized noises may come out and the other women will hold it against them. I know that it has been a concern of mine but I don�t know about other women. I have always thought that I didn�t want people to recognize my shoes in the bathroom and next time they see those shoes they will associate whatever noise was made with them. Women do look at other women�s shoes in the potty. Not only is it a mechanism for finding your friends while in a theme park but it is also a mechanism for the judgement of moving forward with any �actions� that you might be taking in the bathroom. My tendency is if the shoes are casual, go for it but if they are all Nine West or Cole Haan fancy in nature make her wait because she might just memorize your shoes and go back and tell all her friends about what you were doing in there. Like Forrest Gump so eloquently put it, �you can tell a lot about people by their shoes�. I don�t know if this is a modern knock-off of the old attitude that women needed to retire to a different location away from society when the �have the vapors� (read: they are gassy). I just don�t know. Contrary to what some may believe I am not the keeper of all knowledge. *gasp!* I just know that this behavior really should stop.

Men, this is why women go to the bathroom together and this is why it takes us so long! We need an ally that we can trust will �break the silence� before we will. It�s not a friendship thing at all; we usually take the weaker female from a group situation because it is the survival of the fittest in there. Ladies, while we are in the bathrooms concerned about �who will pee first because I don�t want to be the first one to make a pee noise...what if something else slips out and I embarrass myself?� we are missing out on conversations, the best jokes and, yes, the end of beer specials.

Countless times I have returned from a trip to the cutthroat world of the restroom to find that not only has the topic changed to something either completely boring, a major event has occurred, like a party has been planned, or I have missed THE joke or action of the night that everyone talks all night and they randomly blurt out, �squirrel hazing � ha!� or something. Sucks, man � it really sucks

Apparently men just go in there and pee, fart and whatever and no one cares. This...to me...is amazing. I guess because men don�t have the memory capacity that women do for small details so it is ingrained in them not to care because they won�t remember it. Well, I vividly remember all of the shoes the people wore in public bathrooms that were not afraid to get it done if you know what I mean.

Now...(inhale)...I have thrown down the gauntlet to releive (no pun intended) the women of the world of this strange ritual that is keeping us from good jokes, drink specials, our friends getting hit on with a really terrible pickup line, and missing enlightening conversation with our friends and families. Great...I get to be the first one to change the world in my own small way.