I have had so much trouble with outhouses.

Not using them mind you, but writing about them until someone suggested I just write about unusual bathrooms or something like that, and that’s what I will try to do.

First, when we were kids, my parents used to say we should write a book about all the bathrooms we used on a car trip. It didn’t matter when the last time we used the toilet was, but if we saw a sign for a bathroom or stopped for gas, we absolutely, positively needed to use the bathroom.

My parents said we were taking inventory or reviewing all of them or something.

When I got older and had my first son, he, of course, used public bathrooms even though we also had a portable camping toilet in the car in case he needed to use it on a long trip without a rest area.

I remembered what my parents said about writing a book and so we took pictures of my son and the places where he used the bathroom – McDonald’s, thruway rest area, gas station, library, you name it. If he used the bathroom, we took a picture of it (the place, not the actual bathroom or the toileting) and we made a little picture book for my Dad.

He loved it!

The second thing that came to mind was my first trip to the UK in 1987. I knew enough not to call the bathrooms bathrooms, but other than that every time I used one, I was not only surprised, it was an exercise in how the fuck do I flush this thing?

Here’s a normal toilet with an American style lever. Okay, no problem. That was in the airport. They like to give you a false sense of security in the airport.

Next toilet. Pretty normal for me, but the tank had a large push button on the top of the tank.

There was a large push button on the wall above the tank.

There was a small push button on the top of the tank, on the side of the tank and on the wall above the tank (these were three separate toilets).

And then I used the men’s room in a pub. It was New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square, and there was much drinking and carousing and the toilets were needed. It’s New Year’s Eve as I mentioned, so the line for the ladies’ was ridiculously long, and my friend and I did not want to wait, so we went into the men’s room. Unfortunately for the men who came in not knowing that a woman was in the stall, the looks on their faces when we left were pretty priceless.

However, this toilet almost kept me. This was probably the most unusual and certainly the most unusual I had seen by far. The toilet itself was a regular public bathroom toilet, no tank, no lever.

I looked around for a floor button (yes, we’d seen those.)

Nope.

I checked the wall for a push button.

Nope.

I don’t know why I looked up, but I did. There’s the tank, way up practically attached to the ceiling, but not with a long chain hanging down. I pulled the chain, everything worked as it should and I left, calling out a warning before I left the stall and waving at four surprised (more than likely extraordinarily drunk) Londoners.

In Scotland, you had to pay 2p to pee, an irony (and a pun) that apparently took 26 years for me to get. You could also get a public shower in Scotland, but I think that was a pound, perhaps more.

Bathroom.

Toilet

Loo.

WC.

Johns.

Porta-pottys.

Los banos.

Ty bach.

The most important thing you need to be able to ask for in a foreign country, whether they are inside or outside.