The Bathroom Caper Betty McCallister 1/12/09 Seven people, one bathroom, no privacy what so ever. That is the tale of my upbringing in my Sierra Way San Bernardino home. It was an ordinary looking white shingled three bedroom house with an addition of a bedroom/den with an outside entrance and where my two brothers David and Tony slept and where the TV claimed it’s place. I seldom watched TV in my teens, the room, known as the den was cold and had a smelly boyish odor about it. The adjoining and only bathroom had two doors connecting the main house to the den, in other words the bathroom being a through fare. The doors at each end of the blessed room did not lock, so if you were lucky you could grab a quick minute in there before the traffic came through. Even closing both door did not prevent people from popping them open saying, ‘oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in there.’ Or the pleading outside, ‘come on, hurry up, I have to go real, real bad’. They would line up at both ends and bang on each door. In the mornings it was total chaos with five kids getting ready for school. Luckily my dad left for work real early or he may have killed us all during these screaming matches. My mom, well she just shouted above the noise, ‘for God’s sake stop it, will ya.’ It was unheard of to fix your hair or face in this the busiest room of the house. No vanity of any kind, just a small mirror above the sink, so all the primping was done in the bedroom mirror. You would have to take a chance to grab a quick shower where at least there was a curtain to hide behind as someone was shouting, ‘mom, she’s been in there fifteen minutes. It’s my turn’. I was the oldest of the five, the bold mixed up teenager who believed it was all about me in those days. I left the home many morning teary eyed from the intensity of the ordeal that one bathroom and five kids created. Oh how I wished I lived somewhere else, in a normal family. One day my younger sister Carol sat on the side of the bathroom sink looking at her beautiful self in the mirror and the sink disconnect from the wall and made an awful crash to the floor, where it sat for oh so long. Dad said he would fix it, but he was as handy as Barney Google, so there it sat until my mother in her wheeling dealing manner bargained with someone to repair it. We were warned with in an inch of our lives to never sit on the sink again. This scenario went on daily for years and about the time I was leaving home when praise the Lord the folks inherited a small sum of money from the death of a relative and low and behold the first thing they did was add a tiny bathroom in the den, bringing about a bit of peace in that mad Sierra Way household. So now when I see the bathrooms I have, and those of friends I can’t help but think how luxurious. A counter top, shelves, drawers and cabinets. We have come a long way. And I say to myself, Betty, if you survived those long ago frightful bathroom years you can survive anything. It’s stuff like that that makes a person tough, strong and builds character, don’t you think? And I guess it was a step above the outhouse days which I thankfully missed out on.