Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. By probably the dozen or so tap of my foot, I stopped tapping my foot.

The only code intended by the tap of my foot is impatience. The tapping is not code for anything else but, with the recent foot-tapping arrest of a senator for lewd behavior in a bathroom, one cannot be too careful.

Impatient or not, I stop tapping my foot because I am hanging out in a public restroom — the restroom of a recent football game. I’m impatient because I’m standing outside of a toilet stall waiting for my young son to finish his bathroom business.

Fathers and grandfathers of little boys know this strange vigil. Few men ever look at ease with the task of taking a small kid to the restroom because there is typically that period of time where the father or grandfather is essentially a grown man hanging out in the bathroom.

Most men go to a public bathroom, do what they have to do, wash up, and go.

That is not the routine in helping a small child go potty. Nope. With a small child, the adult male has to either wait outside the stall for the youngster to finish his business, or the adult male is in the stall helping the youngster get on with the business of doing his business.

Men who normally say few words will speak volumes while escorting a child to a public restroom. They will speak loudly if in the stall with a small child. “OK, YOU NEED TO AIM. … DON’T TOUCH THAT. … OK, FINISH UP.” The man often asks questions so the child will answer so others will know that there is no funny business happening in the stall only a man helping a child or grandchild.

The same is true for the man waiting outside of the stall. If you’re essentially looming outside of a toilet stall, you want people to know that everything is on the up and up. So, the man outside the stall will repeatedly ask the bathroom-using child questions. “Everything going all right in there?” “You about finished in there?” “You need any help in there?” “What are you doing in there?”

Then there are the don’t forgets: Don’t forget to pull your pants up. Don’t forget to flush.

For a man, these questions are partly out of concern for the child, but mainly they are to show everyone else that he is not some guy just hanging out in a restroom.

So, now with all this other stuff going on, a man has to be even more careful how he looks helping Junior go to the bathroom. So, I don’t care if I am impatient to get back to the game, no tapping my foot. No checking through the door to see if the child is finished. No wide stance as I stand outside the stall. And more questions than ever.

“ARE YOU DONE IN THERE YET? HOW’S IT GOING? DON’T FORGET TO FLUSH! AND FOR PETE’S SAKE, DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING. DO YOU HEAR ME, SON?”



Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times features editor.