When I was growing up many of the houses that I lived in or visited had only one bathroom. This was considered normal in the 50s as many of those who lived in the houses of that era had grown up with outside facilities. That lone inside toilet was an appreciated luxury. In fact, in 1965 when I got married, we visited my husband’s grandparents who were living on a farm in Wisconsin. The facilities were in a shed in the backyard, which they took for granted. We are talking about a couple in their 80s facing that walk in the dark, not to mention in the middle of bone-chilling mid-Western winters.
Jump to many decades later, as I was accompanying my granddaughter on a tour of colleges in Florida, as she was an accomplished swimmer. Most of these places of higher learning had been built in the recent past, and were in competition to get the rising seniors of the new generation. On one tour of a lovely, modern campus with a group of prospective students and their accompanying relatives, I was stunned to find a group that had seemed very bored as we toured the academic campus, come to life when we entered a sample dorm room.
Personally, I was impressed by the fact that the room seemed much more spacious than I remembered my college room being. And in addition there were two bathrooms right in the room, one for each roommate, each containing a toilet and sink, but only one with the addition of a shower and tub. The listless parents came suddenly to life as it became apparent that the residents of the room would (gasp) have to share that shower. How was this fair? Which girl would get the better bathroom? Would the parent get to pay less tuition if their student was left with only the smaller facility? Was this any way to live? As we filed out of the room I overheard one set of parents announcing loudly to the world in general, that the bathroom situation was a ‘deal breaker’ for them. Really?
My granddaughter ended up going to an academically rigorous college in the northeast, where she lived in a small room with an antiquated hall bathroom that five girls shared. I think that slight, wiry 80 year old marching through the snows of a mid-Western winter would have approved of her priorities.