The elusive beast that has haunted me for decades is a simple question:  why don’t people knock before trying to enter a public restroom? Knocking is such a simple preventative measure, and I could never wrap my mind around why so many individuals avoid it. You’re advancing on a room where people take off their pants and crap into a bowl, and you’re just going to go for it? The fuck is wrong with you? At first, I believed this behavior to be an outlier: a sliver of the pie chart owned by an overly anxious minority that shirk confrontation whenever possible. Perhaps making their presence known to the faceless creator of chocolate cakes make them feel vulnerable. Or maybe they even fear an extreme reaction, that the occupant will become violent at the idea that they too have to poop.* However, this working theory quickly collapsed.

The more time I spent in public restrooms, the more I realized that forgoing the knock wasn’t a fluke. Each day, I pooped in public, and each day I was greeted by the metallic click of someone going straight for the handle. The anxious minority wasn’t enough, so I factored in the naive: those of us that implicitly trust strangers not to scar them for years to come.** And if you think there aren’t people out there that would happily traumatize you with whatever weird shit they’re into, then you need to focus up, because mankind has an endless variety of kinks. If we consider that anyone could be in a public bathroom, and anyone can be aroused by anything, then the possibilities of what could be behind that door are endless, and your mind should always default to depravity. But, I’m not telling you anything new. Humanity has a severe lack of faith in humanity, to the point that we cross the street when someone is walking toward us, hire third party companies to protect our identity, and carry guns on the off chance someone pulls one on us. How can we be so trusting in one public arena and not at all in every other?

I was then struck by the unfortunate epiphany that, as an individual that knocks first, I am the minority, and possibly the sole exception. Not only do A LOT of people try to enter a public piss closet on first contact, but ALL of the people do. Everyone assumes that everyone else will lock the door behind them, a line of reason that paved the way for epiphany number two: neglecting to knock first isn’t blindly trusting the character of the human behind that door, it’s trusting them not to trust you. We have fallen so far as a society that expecting someone will take advantage of us has become our baseline, and the only solution is to accept that in this world people will always try to barge in on you at your most vulnerable. Not because they thirst for chaos, or because they don’t realize chaos could be around any corner, but because their faith in mankind is so broken that they believe themselves to be untrustworthy, and will expect you to take every available measure against them.

Footnotes:

*I don’t know who needs to hear this, but knocking on a door does not make you visible to the person inside, because – and this is important – there’s a fucking door in the way. Yes, that object that inspired you to knock is the same one defending you from potential retaliation. Not only can they not see you, but you don’t have to say anything in response. Just tap on the door, receive confirmation that it’s occupied, and walk away, leaving no assurance that you were anything more than an auditory hallucination. 

**There are few things that will scar the psyche more than barging in on someone with their pants around their ankles, unless of course you’re doing it on purpose as some sort of power play. Need to gain a psychological advantage over friend/co-worker? Catch them with their pants around their ankles and a train in the outbound tunnel. The perfect crime.