Don't get flushed reading this

There's one room in every house or apartment I've lived in that I seem to spend most of my time in -- the bathroom.

I'll dispense with the reasons for my frequent visits to the restroom and focus on the key to any bathroom. That's comfort.

The bathroom I used while growing up was small. I go back now and hardly fit, but it's designed with a window overlooking my folks' backyard. I could sit there for hours on a summer evening looking out over the field of the junior high school while watching the traffic lights come down Amsdell Road. Ah, the wind in the hickory nut tree, the sound of the train whistle from down the street and a clean toilet. Who could ask for more?

When I moved to Douglas, the apartment had a great design for the bathroom. The toilet sat right against the sink so I could rest my head on my folded arms while I sat down. Jayne caught me sleeping several times -- and she thought I fell in!

No laughing at the sleeping part. Since I average about five hours of sleep a night -- seven hours is a luxury -- I'll take a nap wherever and whenever I can. I'm not proud. I'm just tired.

In fact, I dozed off at the end of my shift the other night at work. After we send our last page to press, there's about a 25-30 minute delay before copies come off the press in Allegan and we get the "all clear" call. I usually do prep work for the next edition, but the other night I was so tired and so sick that I put my head down on the desk and was asleep in seconds. The call from Allegan woke me up and the poor guy at the other end must have wondered what I was on when we talked.

Anyway, bathrooms have offered a place of quiet in an otherwise busy world. I think Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons" called the bathroom his "Fortress of Solitude." Oh, yeah.

I've been in bad bathrooms, too, of course. The Toledo train station stands out as the worst public restroom I've been in -- even worse than those little gas station restrooms in the Upper Peninsula. Ick. And a friend in Columbus, Ohio, had a bathroom with a floor so weakened by a leaky shower that using his bathroom was like surfing in a thunderstorm. And going in the wild -- remember, I bike ride and sometimes when you gotta go, you gotta go -- is overrated by the nature nuts. Bears go in the woods because they don't have access to the Saugatuck public restrooms on Butler Street.

And port-o-potties? What fool thought these up? Little plastic closets with a base of human excrement. Nice. They ought to come with oxygen masks.

My bathroom in the house I'm in now is not as comfortable as my Douglas facility, nor does it offer a scenic view like the one I had growing up, but it is peaceful. The kids know to leave me alone and use the "good" bathroom downstairs. Only the cats bother me now when I'm relaxing and reading (the bathroom is the best place to enjoy a book) because I share the room with their litter boxes.

In fact, I caught one of our pets taking a cat nap there the other day. You go, Melvis. You go.

Thought: As Dr. Seuss said, wash your hands after you use the euphemism.