Yesterday, Joshua and I were road-tripping home from Syracuse NY and my training as a sociologist completely failed to make me break out of the system into which I’ve been thoroughly socialized. It went like this:

We were lost somewhere in the Northeast corner of Pennsylvania looking for the cabin we were stopping at to pick up our friends who were riding back to VA with us. We stopped at a little gas station/country store to see if anyone could help us. I had to go to the bathroom. There was a ladies room and a men’s room. They were both one person bathrooms. Someone was in the ladies room. I looked around and Joshua and I and a police officer were the only people in the whole store. I checked the men’s room door – OPEN! I thought, "I’ll just use this." Then, all of a sudden, I froze thinking “Ew, this is the men’s room. I’m not going in there.” Then it occurred to me: “Mary, you are a sociologist. You know better than to get sucked into silly social pressures about not using the room with the short hair on the door. You know this is just a thoroughly internalized social norm that means nothing in this instance. It’s a one person bathroom. No one will see you go in there. You know it’s silly.” So, what did I do?

I waited for the ladies room.