Gene Weingarten: That awkward moment when you take your kid to the restroom

When I walked into the men’s room of a restaurant the other day, a 30-ish man was there, looking suspicious. The room had one stall and one urinal, and both seemed unoccupied. He was using neither. Legally, he appeared to be “loitering.” We had eye contact, but he could not hold it. He looked down. I think he sensed my discomfort because he nodded, sheepishly, toward the stall.

From inside, a faint rustle of clothing.

Ah!

Apparently there were feet in there, but little feet that did not reach low enough to be seen. I smiled at Dad.

“I’ve been there, dude, many years ago.”

He smiled, too.

“Yeah,” he said. It was a world-weary “yeah.”

When you are a young dad, moments like this are inevitable. To fulfill your parental responsibilities, you sometimes must appear to be a degenerate. (I’m sure moms find themselves in similar situations, but no one suspects a woman in a bathroom of loitering for unseemly purposes. Women are expected to spend time in bathrooms, primping or preening or powdering or whatever other p-word it is they do in there, and we love them for it. Men unzip, unload and get the hell out, and if they don’t they are presumed to be up to no good.)

So we were there in the bathroom, bonding, this loitering dad and I.

I was now at the urinal, reminiscing. Specifically, I was remembering the day in the fall of 1986 when, on vacation together in Key West, Dave Barry and I had decided to give our wives some kidless time together by taking our children to the beach. We’d be fine! We were competent modern fathers! Unfortunately, we forgot to bring bathing suits or suntan lotion or anything to eat, and I forgot to bring diapers for my son, who had just turned 2 and was essentially a time bomb. Matters intensified almost immediately when my 5-year-old daughter, Molly, announced that she had to go potty.

I escorted her to the appropriate outbuilding, and Molly, being a Big Girl, went in by herself. I hovered outside as minutes expanded into tens of minutes and I began to increasingly resemble a nervous pervert outside the door of a ladies’ room. Finally, Molly came out and announced that she had been unable to locate the toilet.

This was funny, but it created a crisis. I could not enter the ladies’ room, yet I had already been in the men’s room, and it was no place I wanted my daughter to smell, let alone experience from the inside. I dithered. I considered, and discarded, hobo-type bathroom alternatives. Fortunately, at that panic-stricken moment, a woman passerby (1) ascertained from Molly that this wretched-looking man was indeed her father, and (2) wordlessly took her hand and brought her into the john.

In the restaurant bathroom, I was zipping up. The loitering dad seemed to be at least a little relieved that no one else had come in. I advised him to be at peace, inasmuch as nothing more embarrassing was likely to happen to him for the rest of the day.

It was at that moment that a small but piercing little voice came from inside the stall. It said:

“Daddy, my doody looks like a candy bar.”

For stories, features such as Date Lab, @Work Advice and more, visit WP Magazine.

Follow the Magazine on Twitter.

Like us on Facebook.

Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com.