Wet Hands, Who you gonna call?

We stopped our packing and made a mad dash to my favorite onion ring/hamburger/steak finger place. It is just a few blocks from our home, so I rarely use their facilities.

However, I forgot to wash my hands and they were dirty with all kinds of stuff one acquires when packing. So after I ordered, I went to the bathroom. I washed my hands and turned around. And there it was: the box.

It gave no indication of whether it was full of towels, partially full of towels or full of hot air. Yep, it just hung on the wall.

So I began to assemble the clues while my hands air dried. There were towels close to the trash can (for a men's room that is close enough). There was no big,round chrome button on the unit. In fact, there was no button at all. So I decided it was a new fangled towel dispenser that was activated by motion. It was certainly not activated by moisture. So, I began to wave my hands gently. Nothing! Then I waved my hands more vigorously. At that moment, I caught a mental picture of every man in the bath room waving his wet hands frantically in front of a rather unresponsive but mildly amused machine.

Bathroom fixtures have been mocking us for years. Perhaps I should more accurately say, bathroom fixtures have been mocking me for years. I am easily confused in the place I need to be the most straight forward.

If I have a problem figuring out the toilet, that is no problem, I just leave it for the next guy. Except in Taiwan. The swanky hotel we stayed in had a public men's room the toilet of which had a sophisticated seat not unlike a fighter pilot cockpit seat. It had controls, and gadgets, and widgets, and I strongly suspect an ejection seat.

Mostly, I have had trouble with sinks. I remember the British Museum of Natural History. One you got past the dinosaur in the lobby, everything else seemed so-- well, small.

But, in the men's room, I found myself standing across from an Asian man joining me at the fount looking for how to turn the darn thing on. We both had approached from different sides watching the water stream forth until--we stepped up. Then the water stopped. We waved our hands like we have been trained to do. We turned our heads sideways to see if there were some hidden faucets. Then like mimics, we shrugged our shoulders(the male universal sign of "what's up with this"). Then we watched as another man, obviously of English descent, come between us and like a pianist playing an instrument, hit the foot pedal and "walla" water.

There was a stainless steel hula hoop right off the floor when activated by the foot, caused the water to run.

So, my mirror image shrugged his shoulders again, washed his hands and off he went. I went off looking for the towel drier thingee.