I love living in the USA. There is so much to see, to do, to enjoy, and to wonder at. It is a remarkable country with remarkable people and we consider ourselves immensely privileged to live where we do.

That being said, there are some things here that just make us scratch our heads a little, or occasionally also quite a lot. These are things that are similar in some ways to what we are used to, but then also completely different in others, so you are no longer certain you are talking about the same thing. This doesn’t make them necessarily worse (or better) but rather they are just different and sometimes to a truly baffling extent.

So, in this series of once-a-month posts I will be looking at some of the most bemusing things we experience as foreigners here. These don’t diminish our love and appreciation for the place one bit, and in fact, in some ways they make us love this weird land even more. These are simply things that emphasize the ALIEN part of our RESIDENT ALIEN experience.

Welcome to the Resident Alien “BUT WHY?” files.

Part one is a doozy. Happy New Year!

America, we love you …

… but why are public toilets such a nightmare in this wonderful land?

I am not sure that there is anything in our immigration experience that has brought me as much anxiety as the public toilets (restrooms) in our adopted home. Firstly, calling them restrooms if the most daft euphemism ever stated. There ought to be no desire as there certainly is no capacity for rest in these places.

How can a nation of such apparent sophistication and societal advance tolerate such savagery?

What do I mean? Aren’t I from Africa which doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation for widespread elegance and sophistication in the sanitation department? Surely the American experience is better than what I grew up with? It isn’t. Not even close, and there is one main reason for it.

The stalls!

Why are the stalls the way that they are? Why is there a huge gap at the bottom so that you are left with no doubt about which shoe owner is responsible for whatever might be happening in their very not private little bit of space? Why are there such huge gaps in the doors that there is an almost certain occurrence of accidental eye contact with the guy in the New Balances who is deeply regretting his Taco Bell decision?

If aliens ever visited the earth and tried to ascertain which nation were the most civilized, and if they used used public toilets as one of their measurables, then the US would be written off as a people either so backward that they needn’t be bothered with, or as those so fiercely savage that they ought to be avoided at all costs. What kind of advanced society would build stalls like this? I find it so traumatic that I try to never be more than 15 minutes from my home, or some similar en-suite arrangement of civility. I have spent five years in a state of severe dehydration, just in case. I try to only eat at restaurants that have gone with unisex bathrooms, because then they inevitably have fully sealed stalls, showing that it can be done! So when others were basing their votes on how bathrooms were going to be allocated to genders, I found myself equally interested to see if any candidates had any decent positions on the issue of the stall door gaps. None did, and I not allowed to vote anyway, but I would have thrown my full and passionate canvassing weight behind any man, woman, or child who promised to make this a center point of their campaign.

Americans won’t believe this, but where I am from, you can walk into a stall that is separated all the way to the floor, and the ceiling, and has a door that closes in a way that … wait for it … means that no one can see you! You know, like an actual effective door, doing what doors are supposed to do.

Now, lest you think that this is nothing more than an unpatriotic rant against the land that has extended me a warm welcome, and lest you repeat one of the oft trotted tropes of the necessity of public “restroom” design, I wanted to assure you that I did some (albeit cursory as this is a hobby blog and not The Atlantic) research, and found not a single justifiable reason for things to be like this.

Some suggest that it is a security requirement, that the “feds” might need to flush a baddy out of their hiding place before they flushed all incriminating evidence, but I could find nothing that suggested that any such requirement existed, and as I said, there are some places that do properly sealed stalls who would obviously then be in breach of said fugitive frustrating legislation. Besides which, it isn’t like criminals in other countries simply have to run into the little boys room in order to completely and utterly confound the cops. “Ah, sorry Captain, he went into the gents and as we have sealed cubicles, there is literally no way that we could know where he is now. If only we had those American stalls. Then we could find him, and look him in the eye.”

Some suggest that it is for ease of cleaning. I could almost see this as valid, but then one would think that these facilities would be cleaner than they are. In any effect that might explain the gaps at the bottom, but certainly not the ones in the doors, unless of course the cleaning is done with a passing fire hose.

Some say that is an ADA regulation for the ease of wheelchair access. This seems plausible, but again, isn’t universally applied, and I am not sure how stalls that offer less modesty than if one were to dress oneself in a small piece of dental floss, are designed to protect the wellbeing of those who might need even more privacy in their most private of activities.

Some say that it prevents indecent acts like drug use or public displays of affection, but I would simply counter that in its attempt to reduce indecency it rather exposes us to a lot more.

Alas, some things must remain unexplained, other than the fact that it is cheaper to build stalls out of four or five matchsticks than it is to build proper places for people to poop in private.

Oh America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Let’s build some stalls to show the world and the potential alien invading force what a remarkably sophisticated bunch we are. Let’s close the stall gaps once and for all.

For dignity. For privacy. For freedom.