confessions of a one-time graffiti artist

Despite my frequent visits to bathroom stalls everywhere, I have yet to write or etch anything on a stall wall.

Once, when I was oh, probably eleven or so, I wrote on a white painted wall on the outside of Roller City. Something about the girls I was with, and the boys we met, one of whom had a red Bic pen, and that clean, freshly painted white surface, and before I knew it, we were drawing on that little bit of smooth concrete. I don't even remember what we were writing or why my always "she's such a good girl" brain fell out, and there I was, defacing the local skating palace. I suppose it might have been the round and round skating, the blisters on the insteps of my feet, or perhaps the once-too-often attempt at backwards skating that resulted in a mighty fall on my bony butt, but for some reason, I totally forgot that if we got caught and my mom found out, not only would I be in trouble, but so would everybody at the place that evening. We would probably all be grounded for our twelfth year of life. By my Mom. And she would have added something icky like cleaning our bathrooms for that whole year. With no phone and obviously no video games or dvds or texting because none of those had been invented yet.

Lucky for us, we were all novice vandals and did not remember or notice that the white wall was adjacent to the ticket booth, both very close to the well-lit parking lot. In no time at all, the probably 19-year-old manager stormed out of the place, hollering at us, asking what were we doing? It was a gentler time and he did not even ask what the heck did we think we were doing? In just moments, the 16-year-old assistant manager joined us, tossing us dirty rags and sploshing down a bucket of water at our feet as he instructed us to get busy and clean up that mess. Totally humiliating all in all.

My escape from death by graffiti and the feeling of that dirty rag in my hands in the cold water that night were and continue to be enough to control my strong desire to mark up those signs that are seen in every eating establishment restroom. I so seriously want to change them from:

Employees must wash hands

to:

Everyone must wash hands