This is the entry I thought I published Wednesday but evidently just left it as a draft and didn’t realize it and spent the whole day thinking you all thought maybe my cute crazy antics were no longer funny and just sad and were just afraid to tell me.
I work in a small office building and my floor only has two businesses: the real estate office I work for, and an eye doctor. There is one public bathroom on our floor, but the eye doctor has their own bathroom so the public bathroom rarely gets used by anyone outside of our office. This means you can be pretty confident when you get up to go to the bathroom – as long as everyone is still in our office that is in for the day – that you’ll have the public bathroom and it’s 4 stalls to yourself.
I guess this is why I’ve become so nonchalant about talking to myself in the bathroom…because usually I’m the only one in there.
But Zoot, you might ask, why are you talking to yourself in the bathroom to begin with?
Oh…so this is not something everyone else does? You don’t walk into public bathrooms giving yourself a type of status report for your day? You don’t vocalize things like, “A nap sure would be nice…” or “I just need to refocus…” or “Maybe I’ll just change tasks for awhile.”
I mean – I’m not having complete conversations with myself – that would be crazy. But I do sometimes just checkin with myself since it’s usually a break in a stretch of focus at the computer or at work. So you don’t do this? Out loud? In a public bathroom?
So. What you’re saying is that yesterday, when I walked into the public bathroom and said out loud, “I can’t believe I’m still so sore from Saturday.” You’re saying that the strange woman that turned out to be in one of the other stalls, she would be confused to find out I was saying that to myself because only one person entered the bathroom? I saw her feet in the stall next to mine the second I sat down and IMMEDIATELY panicked in shame and just PRAYED that she assumed my conversation partner was a man who just didn’t come in and she was simply hearing part of our conversation.
Whatever she assumed, it seems she wasn’t in a rush to interact with the woman talking to herself. Or maybe she was in a rush to see if there was another person waiting for me outside the bathroom. Either way she flushed, left the stall, and didn’t even wash her hands she was in such a hurry.
Which game me the bathroom to myself again so I could finally respond to myself, “Well, Zoot…that’s what happens when you go a whole year between Body Pump classes.”
Funny! My husband does this all the time in the shower without realizing it. I’ll walk in and hear “my toe hurts” or “that soup was good last night” in a low murmur.
First, I think SHE is the crazy one for going to the bathroom and not washing her hands! Next, I talk to myself all the time, usually at home or in the car, but sometimes at Target when I forget where I am. And I don’t just make a comment…I have the whole conversation. No one else around here listens to me!
Funny! I mostly talk to myself in the car or in my office. Usually I’m alone when I do that, but sometimes I forget others are there and do it anyways! Every now and then I’ll be in public and I’ll think something and a person near me will say “What?” Then I’ll pretend I’m on the phone ?
I talk to myself all the time, and now that I work from home, I’m afraid I’m closer to forgetting not to do so in public! I don’t think of it as having a conversation so much as a running monologue of what’s on my mind … but I know it can sound strange from the outside.
Perhaps it wasn’t so much that you were talking to yourself, but concern about what you might have been doing on Saturday, that made her flee.
I was going to say just that. She didn’t wash her hands! I think that trumps talking to yourself! And I think we all know there’s a difference between talking to yourself because you’re just thinking out loud, and Talking To Yourself because you’re no longer in touch with reality and think you’re talking to someone else (who isn’t there).
I don’t talk to myself in the bathroom but I have walked in on people doing it. It’s kind of funny because it’s a little bit awkward but I can’t judge because I do it sometimes at home. And even if someone *was* muttering to themselves because they had an imaginary friend, I think I’d still remember to wash my hands!
This is why I missing having small children. I would talk to my kids from birth until they started running away in public. It was basically a running commentary on my life. Now they are teens… there is no one to make me look less insane now. 🙁
So I’m not a bathroom talker, but I’ll talk to myself in the car, walking down the hall at work, in the stairwell, or at my desk. I’m sure people have heard all kinds of nonsense!
Oh and I’ve caught parts of bathroom talkers’ mutterings……I just giggle to myself.
Just as an aside I don’t wash my hands in the bathrooms anymore. I always use hand sanitizer that I have on my purse so I don’t have to worry about the whole paper towels, hand dryer, door germs thing.
I’m an inherently social (and nosy) person. I’m likely to have asked why you were still sore 🙂 I’m glad you shared it, and that isn’t something that only you do!!
I do talk to myself , which drives my husband crazy , when I get upset when he doesn’t answer a question that I ask, he says “I never know when your talking to me or muttering to yourself ”
ROFL at your story , that’s a great one ….
I talk to myself a lot when I’m working on something difficult at work, or when my computer acts up! Heh. I tell people it’s because I have so many voices in my head that one needs to come out, so I can listen.
I also carry hand sanitizer. Mostly because public restroom soap chaps my dainty skin. I try to make sure I use it in the restroom though so nobody will think “yuck”. Although. Why am I worried at all about what other people think?
My husband talks to himself ALL THE TIME.
This just made me really laugh. I talk to my baby in the grocery store and sometimes I forget he isn’t with me and I realize I have said something out loud to myself in a crowded grocery store.