One of the most enduring memories of my childhood is a vivid flashback of me standing in a ladies’ room stall while my mother impatiently stripped toilet paper off the roll and lined the seat for me.

I can understand the impatience; when you have five kids and you’re at a rest stop or a department store and they all have to go to the john, I can imagine that the drill of lining five toilet seats with bulk-grade toilet paper has to get really old, really fast.

Like most kids, though, I didn’t understand why. I could barely be coerced to wash my hands after using the bathroom, much less caring about the toilet in a public john. So I have to admit to being a little embarrassed (well, to put a fine point on it: humiliated) when mom would give an exasperated sigh and start lining toilet seats. I mean, what was the big deal?

Years later (about 40 of them, to be precise) I understand. Twice today I’ve had to run into a public bathroom and, when I stopped to look more closely at the seat in the stall, I found it again…telltale drops.

I’m tellin’ ya: for all the complaining that women do over men not lifting the lid, and putting the lid back down, you’d think that more women would be more careful about the lid when they’re through with it.

Apparently, there’s a bunch of you who just, well, don’t finish the job properly and leave telltale drops on the lid when you’re done.

There’s apparently another whole sub-culture of women who, mindful of the first group, were taught never, ever, ever to sit down on the danged thing in a public john and so wind up whizzing all over hell and creation because, quite frankly, we just don’t have the control that men say they have when they’re signing their names in the snow but mysteriously lose at 3 a.m. in their own bathrooms.

I have gotten so aware of this that I have other, vivid flashbacks to the delight I felt about ten years ago when I found out that I could order my own little toilet paper liners and carry them around with me, just in case a public john was understocked. I imagine that my own daughters have a vivid flashback of their own of the day I chased after them at a softball game, heading into the loo, waving my little plastic polka-dotted case and urging them to take one.

(Note: I called my mom when I found those little gems and told her how she could order them. She responded with a pause, and then a carefully worded, “You know, even *I* wouldn’t do *that.*)

So, lady, I don’t care what you do in the stall. Do backflips. Read tarot cards. Call your broker. Sit down. Or not. Use those handy little liner thingies. Or not. But when you’re done, please oh please spend a moment and review your handiwork, such as it is, and clean up.