The Wait at the Ladies

All right, I have a question. Why does it take women so long in the public restroom? Yesterday I waited a full five minutes (and that’s not even a long wait) for a woman to vacate the bathroom. Now, I am a woman, and it takes me very little time to go in, do my business, and be out; I even wash my hands (this is one of my theories about why men take less time).

What are they doing in there--reading, washing and blow-drying their hair, grouting the tile, napping? What? A week ago a woman leaving the restroom with two large bags said, “I’m sorry I took so long, I had to change clothes.” I said that’s okay (though it wasn’t). But what I wanted to say was, “How many times did you change clothes, ten, twenty?” Really.

So, if anybody knows the answer to this question, please tell me. This is one of the many mysteries about my own gender that I have yet to fathom.

Jung 101

A few nights ago I went to the bookstore and was hanging out in the religion/philosophy section—no surprise there. I mostly check out the Eastern Philosophy books, looking for new trends or anything interesting. Buddhism and psychology seem to be coming back into vogue.

Anyway, while I was there, an older man came over and started talking to me. First he wanted to know what I was looking for. Then he wanted to tell me all of the gurus he’d met or meditated with. Then he wanted to know if I knew them. Then he told me all about how he was there “when it all started.” Then he wanted to know whether or not I practiced, and what I practiced. Then he told me he was beyond “isms.”

I responded to the majority of these comments with either hmmm, or very short responses.

Then he told me he didn’t practice Zen anymore because it didn’t fit his (Jungian) archetype.

I said, “Hmmm.”

But what I wanted to say was, “Which archetype is that, the one that hangs out in bookstores and tries to pick up blonde women twenty years younger than you?”

I don’t remember that one.