Almost daily we read or hear about someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upset over not being allowed to use a restroom of his\/her choice. When I taught at Highlands, the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gender\u00e2\u20ac\u009d referred to grammatical terms such as he or she. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used to describe sex, as in male or female. But in the past few years, an issue \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dare try to officiate \u00e2\u20ac\u201d regarding which restroom one should occupy, has become big news.<\/p>\n
In the 1990s, most of my classes at Highlands University were on the second level of Mortimer Hall, the classroom building that used to rest where the new student union lives. It began as a dorm, possibly as early as the 1950s.<\/p>\n
Even though it was a men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dormitory, the upstairs restroom had all the necessary equipment for men, but at ground level, the layout clearly favored women. Why would women be in a men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dorm? Maybe there were people of the opposite sex (er\u00e2\u20ac\u201dgender) who worked there.<\/p>\n
I never gave the restroom arrangement much thought until one of my students in an evening class, who was scheduled to give a presentation, asked me to guard the door to the men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s room while she made a pit stop. Obviously in discomfort, she said she wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be able to make the trip downstairs.<\/p>\n
So I dutifully played traffic cop and all was well.<\/p>\n
Things were simpler then. In the U.S. we read or hear about how the restroom issue has escalated. Some assert people should visit restrooms according to the gender (they mean sex) on their birth certificate. Others argue that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trans\u00e2\u20ac\u009d people ought to be given a choice.<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done considerable traveling in the past few years, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve noticed that most airports have restroom facilities whose doors have the obvious outline of a man or a woman. But other airports have a third restroom \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for those who claim one sex or the other.<\/p>\n
Once, as we landed on a loaded plane, we noticed many passengers making a beeline to the men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s or women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s restrooms. But interestingly, there was a line entering the unisex facility \u00e2\u20ac\u201d passengers probably assuming that room would be less crowded. And it was.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, my wife and I noticed a restroom in a shopping center in Stockholm, Sweden. The planners of this facility were insightful: Instead of all that male-or-female bickering, the several rooms had no funny male-female drawings on the doors. A person of either sex simply entered an unlocked room and was treated to a world of privacy. Each room was sealed: each had its own toilet, sink and mirror.<\/p>\n
It would have been impossible for anyone to sneak a peek. That would allay the fears, or at least the discomfort some people might feel when someone \u00e2\u20ac\u0153different\u00e2\u20ac\u009d enters to use the facilities.<\/p>\n
All the hand washing, tooth brushing and hair combing takes place in individual rooms, rather than needing to perform ablutions in front of others.
\nProblem solved.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Since the dawn of civilization, or at least as long as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been alive, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had the family nickname, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Huevon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (pronounced weh-vohn).<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why it means what it does, to us Spanish speakers, but it does.<\/p>\n
If one had asked my mother, the late Marie Trujillo, what it meant, she would have simply pointed to me, her youngest, without uttering a word.<\/p>\n
Huevon refers to a hen egg, but in Trujillo parlance, it simply means lazy.<\/p>\n
My mom, the woman who often rose early enough to serve omelets to our next-door neighbors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 chickens, called me that.<\/p>\n
The seven of us Trujillos, by Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s command, needed to be up early. Once, feeling quite imaginative, she interspersed Ben Franklin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quotation between threats.<\/p>\n
It went something like this: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Early to bed (get up, Mannie (my name at the time), early to rise (are you still in bed? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost 6 o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122clock) makes a man (levantate, huevon!) healthy, wealthy and (I really mean it!) wise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
My siblings apparently had different body chemistry and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to cop a few extra zees. My explanation that things would go easier if everybody else took care of bathroom needs and let me go last didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t influence Mom.<\/p>\n
I believed she wanted everybody up. Period.<\/p>\n
But aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biological clocks different? Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t some people perform better and more efficiently if they start later in the day? Why is sunrise so early? Why does the world of work insist on such an early start? Aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t people like me more efficient in the afternoon, when early-risers are zonked out?<\/p>\n
And finally, what made Ben Franklin an expert on time, knowledge and behavior, anyway?<\/p>\n
Two things happened to give me my deserved retribution. I worked at the Optic while in high school and because of a change in press deadlines, needed to lay out sports pages before school. That usually meant leaving the house around 6:45.<\/p>\n
But later, the teletype machine started getting jammed, preventing pages from being processed. Naturally, my boss, Tom Wright, wanted me to arrive at 6 to unjam the teletype.<\/p>\n
Remember, all this early rising was coming from the boy whose mom affectionately dubbed him \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Huevon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And finally, Mom opted to take on delivery of the Denver Post, a huge metropolitan daily newspaper. Truckers would drop off Las Vegas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 share in an alley behind what was then the Troy Hotel, on Grand. And at the unearthly hour of 4:30, Mom and I picked up the papers for delivery.<\/p>\n
The daily editions were manageable, but the Sunday Denver Post, with all its inserts, forced up to completely remove the rear seats of our car.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, that sort of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Huevonish\u00e2\u20ac\u009d penance ended before I graduated from Immaculate Conception School.<\/p>\n
I still wonder whether the Denver Post job, coupled with that of the UPI wire at the Optic, combined to punish my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Huevoncy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Almost daily we read or hear about someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upset over not being allowed to use a restroom of his\/her choice. When I taught at Highlands, the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gender\u00e2\u20ac\u009d referred to grammatical terms such as he or she. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used to describe sex, as in male or female. But in the past few years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}