A Room of One's Own

I live in a tiny cottage with my beau but thankfully it came with an extra bathroom. Okay, bathroom is a generous term for the toilet that sits in the basement laundry area with no door, completely exposed. Even so, anyone who grew up in a large family with a single bathroom will relate to the benefit of having more than one commode.

Such was the case for the first twelve years of my life, when my family lived in a two-story parsonage. The house boasted five bedrooms, perhaps because preachers tend to fill a couple pews with their own children. Yet unbelievably, there was just a single bathroom to share between seven kids and two adults. Think about that for a minute. Nine people, one bathroom. I understand this is  not uncommon in third-world countries but this was America. Rural America, but still...

So you can imagine how convenient it must have been to live across the street from our little church, one whose doors were never locked and that contained a bathroom with not one, but TWO stalls. My five sisters and I often pee-pee danced across the street when the bathroom was in use by one of our siblings or, God forbid, my dad. To him, it was not just a bathroom; it was his study, his escape from seven females and our baby brother. When nature called my dad, it was as if God himself had called him to the ministry of elimination. He'd spend hours in there "studying," his claim backed up by the stacks of reference books, concordance, and a several versions of the Bible. And yes, some of them had toilet paper squares marking the pages. 

People often ask if THIS I KNOW is autobiographical. The answer is yes and no. The story is fiction, but did I harvest snippets from my fertile childhood growing up as a preacher's kid? Absolutely. Including this little gem:

By the time I get back from town, Daddy’s in the bathroom doing some last-minute cramming for his sermon tomorrow. It’s one of his favorite places to think. Unfortunately, if one of us needs to pee we have to walk over to the church because he’s not coming out anytime soon. Even if he did, nobody would want to go in right after Daddy’s been in there. I fast-walk across the street, rushing past the church janitor and into the girls’ bathroom. Somebody has scratched "Jesus Loves You" into the back of the bathroom door. I wonder if whoever wrote it considered whether Jesus would like her vandalizing His holy house.

 Sorry, Dad, but that was too good not to steal. 

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If you're reading this on Sunday morning (12-19-17) there's still time to enter a giveaway for a $20 Target Gift Card just by dropping a comment on the thread below this photo on my Facebook Author Page: