The bathrooms of my grade school appear quite often in my dreams.
Before you phone my therapist, please allow me to explain.
(Actually, feel free to call my therapist -- she’s terrific -- but I should warn you that my school-bathroom fixation is not the kind of topic I usually address during my 50-minute sessions, not with my-fear-of-flying and all those writer’s-block issues needing immediate attention….)
But I honestly believe that elementary-school bathrooms are worth our attention. They loom large in one’s imagination, not only when you’re a kid and using them, but also when you’re an adult and recalling them. As I’ve discovered by employing the underhanded and seditious research method of asking other people directly, most adults have distinct memories of the boys’ and girls’ rooms of their youth.
I’m not kidding. Okay, so you might not want to toss the question to a new partner on a first date, but ask a friend: more than likely, you’ll hear a story.
When I’ve asked for these particular reminiscences, I’m offered details. This is not necessarily the case when I ask about grade-school gymnasiums, or music rooms, or auditoriums. When asked about those places, listeners nod their heads and narrow their eyes, ransacking their memories for scenes.
One thing I’ve also noticed is that everybody shuts their eyes when I ask them to recall details about the facilities in their earliest schools. And I don’t believe that this is only because they’re fed up with my constant questioning.
The eye-shutting doesn’t seem deliberate; it seems, in contrast, unconscious and instinctive. Without even realizing it, they’re shutting down their other senses in order to recall a smell. As every reader of Proust knows, scent conjures up, and is irrevocably connected to, childhood; I’ve discovered, however, that even the evocation of the memory of a smell can have the same effect.
No doubt there’s a scientist working on the neurology behind this connection -- I can only vouch for the fact of it.
And I’m not talking only bad smells here: this is not like talking about skeevy portable toilets at 2 a.m. at free rock concerts, a sensory-experience inextricably connected to later stages of youthful developmental-processes.
What I remember from my elementary-school bathrooms is a mix of scents of disinfectant, bleach, hand-soap, and not-quite-dry mops. In the winter, you’d add wet wool to the general aroma. I can close my eyes and smell new paint as well, although I can’t imagine that the bathrooms were painted more than once a year, if that. But the hint-of-new-paint remains, perhaps a testament to my belief that the bathrooms in my elementary school were clean, safe, and could be regarded as a refuge.
Actually, it’s the “refuge” angle that makes the bathrooms of Oceanside Elementary School #3 (known more fondly as “Oak School #3” by those inspired by its motto “Small Acorns Grow Into Mighty Oaks”) appear regularly in my dreams. In many of them, I am walking the wide staircases of the 1920s-era brick building, looking down at the grooves in the stone (granite, perhaps?) and thinking about how many kids’ feet have trodden the same pathway up to the “big girls’” bathroom on the top floor. I am wearing Buster Brown’s or black-and-white saddle shoes.
In these staircase dreams, I am always moving up -- even when waking life hasn’t been moving in the same direction.
The big girls’ bathroom was reserved exclusively for lofty, ethereal sixth graders, those remarkable creatures who had left behind the days of wide-lined paper and over-sized crayons. It was a yellow-and-white-tiled haven. There was a casement window looking out into treetops, but fresh air was only one of the room’s myriad attractions.
What I liked was the serenity of the place, although I probably had yet to learn the word “serenity.”
Whereas our little kids’ toilets were noisy and splashy, with puddles under the sinks and toilet seats that wobbled and skid, the fancy bathroom for the grown-up girls seemed pristine and elegant. There were fewer stalls. Quiet. It was almost always empty except between classes.
Which meant, of course, that I had to figure out how to get there during actual classroom time in order to have the sanctuary all to myself. But since I was one of those kids who careened through her work and then spent the rest of the time doodling rather than double-checking the pages, I could ask for bathroom passes without being eyed for either truancy or cheating. I’d secure a pass and then sneak around the staircase in order to case the joint (I might not have known the word “serene” but because I had watched detective movies since my infancy, I packed a sophisticated cops-and-robbers vocabulary not often associated with second-grade girls).
I’d make sure nobody was watching (no school guards in those days -- only the occasional hall-monitor) and run furtively up those stone steps.
It was probably the only time in my life that I breathed deeply when entering a public restroom, but I would put my back to the door and stand there in the calm silence as I caught my breath. Then I’d look out the window. I would be by myself, in a silent place, where nobody was looking at me or telling me what to do, or asking me why I wasn’t playing kickball, or sitting next to somebody at lunch, or standing next to somebody else on line. (“On line” also had a different meaning in those days -- and no bona fide New Yorker has ever stood “in” line.)
Don’t get me wrong: I liked school. Some days, some years, I really loved school. But although sociable and friendly by nature, I also felt that to go for hours and hours every day with absolutely no time alone was weird and nervous-making. It certainly made me anxious. I needed to have a plan for escape, however brief.
Even a couple of minutes by myself supplied what I needed in terms of -- okay, laugh, but it’s true -- solitude. Alone-time, I guess it would now be called, although this wasn’t about privacy as much as it was about sanctuary.
It wasn’t an ivory tower, but a yellow-tiled one.
And so I still believe the word “solitude” is right.
After a minute or two, I’d head back down to my real life on a lower floor and settle back into my rightful place. Understanding that I’d somehow managed to finagle a privilege, I was aware of the need not to overdo it, not to make my teachers worry or wonder about my whereabouts. I’d look at the tree branches outside the lower window and remember how they looked from their tops.
All this from a trip to the toilet, you say? Yep.
In tacky movies, school bathrooms are where nerdy kids get pelted by paper-towels or have their heads swished in the commode, but in actual life, the people to whom I’ve spoken seem to have found a certain odd comfort in these comfort stations. So, even if it wasn’t exactly your favorite place, and even if you don’t dream about it, I’ll bet that you remember your school’s smallest room. And I suggest that you offer that “pass” to the kid who asks for it, even if she isn’t jiggling up and down on one foot; you might not quite understand that she’s looking for a room of her own.
About the Author
Regina Barreca
Professor of English literature and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, Regina Barreca grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York, received a B.A. from Dartmouth College, an M.A. from Cambridge University (where she was a Reynolds' Fellow), and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York. An award-winning columnist for The Hartford Courant, her work also appears in various other papers. She has appeared on scores of radio and television programs, including 20/20,48 Hours,The Today Show, and Oprah. Her latest book is Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation. Visit her Web site Gina Barreca Click here to read more about her.
Remembering an 
Regina Barreca 