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- "These essays are so good and so funny, it makes me mad that I don't know a lot of these writers. Wait...that's the kind of back handed compliment you'd get from an obnoxious mom. Curses!" - Laraine Newman, original Saturday Night Live cast member
Every time I go in there, she’s in there.
No healthy person should spend that much time in the bathroom.
But there she is, in front of the mirror, inspecting herself.
The strange thing is, she doesn’t seem to see me – or any other person who enters. As a matter of fact, she never looks up from the full-length mirror on one end of the four-stalled women’s bathroom here at Acme Grommets and Gravel.
She is pupil deep in her own reflection.
It is a shared bathroom, of course – which explains the four toilets – and her standing there, picking over the details of her hair, her clothes, the way she looks first this way, then that, can make for an awkward visit.
One expects, after all, that etiquette be maintained in an office environment. One enters the loo, does one’s business, washes one's two hands, maybe checks for bugs in one’s hair and/or teeth, and then one gets the hell out.
Tiffani/Ambur/Krystal does not see it this way.
She is standing in front of the mirror when you enter.
She is there when you drop your pants, when you, as we like to say, do what you came to do.
She is there when you come out of the stall, no matter how long it takes.
She is there as you step around her.
“Excuse me,” you say, a reminder that she needs to move from in front of the sink so that you can wash.
She is there while you wash, while you dry, while you give yourself the ol’ “what-do-my-teeth-look-like” in the mirror.
And she is there when you leave.
Tiffani/Ambur/Krystal is getting on my nerves.