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The first time I mentioned the "waiting room" in the restrooms at my university, my husband (then boyfriend) looked at me like I was crazy.

"What do you mean, 'waiting room'?"

"Oh, you know, that little room just before you go into the restrooms. It has a big mirror and an old couch. They have one in the social sciences building too."

"Well, there's no 'waiting room' in the men's bathrooms." Now he teases me when we're out somewhere and I head for the bathroom. "Don't stay too long in the jacuzzi!" he teases me. Conversely, he will come back from the bathroom and say there were no urinals--it was just a room with a big hole in the middle of the floor that everybody had to pee in.

The bathroom waiting areas and couches must reflect that female instinct to flee and hide. In middle school and high school, what was the first thing a girl did when she saw her ex dancing with another girl? She gathered her best friends and they fled to the locker room to stand around her wielding tissues and cups of Kool-Aid, throwing away their Sunday-School manners and pulling up every bad word they knew to defame the boy in question.

If men get anything, it's usually decorative rather than functional. They get pictures of scantily-clad women, or they get newspapers sheathed in plexiglass so they can read the sports section while they pee. One of our favorite restaurants has an airplane theme in the men's bathroom--the walls around the urinal are painted to make you feel like you're flying an airplane. In other words, you're in the cockpit. I know, I know. (Conversely, the same restaurant's women's bathroom has two toilets with no stalls around them, so you can either lock other people out or only go in there with exceptionally close friends.)

At another restaurant, my husband came back from the bathroom and informed everyone at the table that there were televisions in the men's bathroom above every urinal. He saw part of a game while he went about his business. I wondered how they handled this in the women's bathroom, assuming there were no televisions. But sure enough, mounted on the back of every door was a small t.v. I sat and watched Ralph Fiennes in some unrecognizable movie. But no sports.