I already posted this before but I'm sharing this again. This email never fails to make me smile. Thanks Liza G.! 
My mother was a fanatic about public toilets. As a little girl, she'd bring me in the stall, teach me to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then, she'd carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat. Finally, she'd instruct, 'Never, never sit on a public toilet seat.' And she'd demonstrate 'The Stance,' which consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your flesh make contact with the toilet seat. But by this time, I'd have gotten wet down my leg. And we'd go home. That was a long time ago. Even now in our more mature years, The Stance is excruciatingly difficult to maintain when one's bladder is especially full.
When you have to go to a public bathroom, you find a line of women that makes you think there's a half-price sale on Mel Gibson's underwear in there. So, you wait and smile politely at all the other ladies, also crossing their legs and smiling politely. And you finally get closer. You check for feet under the stall doors. Every one is occupied. Finally, a stall door opens and you dash, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter. You hang your purse on the door hook, yank down your pants and assume 'The Stance.'
Relief. More relief. Then your thighs begin to shake. You'd love to sit down but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold 'The Stance' as your thighs experience a quake that would register an eight on the Richter scale. To take your mind off it, you reach for the toilet paper. The toilet paper dispenser is empty. Your thighs shake more.
You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on-that's in your purse. It would have to do. You crumble it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail.
Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work and your purse whams you in the head.
"Occupied!" you scream as you reach out for the door, dropping your tissue in a puddle and falling backward, directly onto the toilet seat.
You get up quickly, but it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with all the germs and life forms on the bare seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper, not that there was any, even if you had enough time to. And your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew, because her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, 'You don't know what kind of diseases you could get.'
By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream of water akin to a fountain and then it suddenly sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged to China. At that point, you give up.
You're soaked by the splashing water. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a Chicklet wrapper you found in your pocket then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks.
You can't figure out how to operate the sinks with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past a line of women, still waiting, cross-legged and unable to smile politely at this point.
One kind soul at the very end of the line points out that you are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long as the Mississippi River! You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the woman's hand and say warmly, 'Here. You might need this.'
At this time, you see your spouse, who has entered, used and exited his bathroom and read a copy of 'War and Peace' while waiting for you.
'What took you so long?' he asks, annoyed. This is when you kick him sharply in the shin and go home.
This is dedicated to all women everywhere who have ever had to deal with a public toilet. And it finally explains to all you men what takes us so long.
Other noteworthy immortal words of wisdom from my mom included:
(1) Pinch your nose every evening so that it would grow to be aquiline (didn't work).
(2) Never mix drinks. (Ignored up to the point when I woke up one morning after and thought my head would fall off.)
(3) "Nice girls don't smoke." (No comment.)
(4) Make sure your underwear has no holes on it; you never know when you'll meet with an accident.
(5) Don't wear pencil skirts when your behind is completely flat! (Also ignored.)
(6) No matter how pretty or smart you are, there'll always be someone prettier or smarter.
(7) The fate of a plain woman is often envied by a pretty woman.
(8) Never say, of these waters I will not drink.
(9) If you don't stop frowning, your face will freeze and you'll be ugly forever.
(10) Never go out into the sun without an umbrella or headgear; you don't see farmers in bikinis, do you?
(11) If you don't stop showing off how smart you are, no one will ever marry you.
