First of all, apologies to Seiko and anyone else who was offended at the title The Tao of Poo. As a couple of you pointed out, it was indeed a riff on the bestseller, The Tao of Pooh. As in Winnie The. Which was in itself a homage to a series of Buddhist insights. It was not intended as a dismissal of the authenticity of Eastern religions, Seiko and actually, we do a pretty good job of spoofing the Western ones too. I respectfully refer you to Monty Python's The Life Of Brian and several successful Broadway plays that poke fun at, among other things, a Catholic education. No insult intended, but I get it.
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Moving on, what I do not get is why some people consider their needs so very much more important than everyone else's that they feel they can tie up the only bathroom in a place where a line is forming outside. I once saw a man take a magazine into the only unisex loo in a small restaurant. Why? (Eventually, irate diners had the manager intervene, but it shouldn't have gotten to that point.)
So just a refresher: when bathrooms don't contain multiple stalls but are single rooms (think your home powder room—toilet and sink), use it quickly and leave. The little room is not for a 20 minute makeup application, or for catching up on your reading, or for making a phone call in privacy. It has a specific purpose and it's a communal resource.
Think how you'd feel if you were waiting in an increasingly long line while someone was taking his or her sweet time.
is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for NPR News and co-author, with Karen Elyse Hudson, of The New Basic Black: Home Training For Modern Times (Doubleday).
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