Auditory-Anal Feedback Loop

There is an iron-clad law of mothering: As soon as a mother sits down on the toilet to do something besides peeing, the phone will ring. The phone call-poop feedback loops is almost as axiomatic as a Al Gore visit causing an ice-storm. Like gravity, you can count on this law.

In my case, the law has an amendment: The phone call will be from my husband. Always. This has lead to his mistaken belief that all I do, all day long is well, you know. Yes, it's faulty logic. He thinks that because he always calls me while I'm in the bathroom, ergo I'm always in the bathroom. My logic is thus: If I go into the bathroom, the phone will ring, it will be him and his first sentence will be, "What are you doing?" Long pause. "Oh. Again?" Yup, again. It happens at least once a day, and you, my good sir, have impeccable timing.

This phenomenon makes me want to buy one of these. No I wouldn't put a phone in there. I'd put a toilet in there. Maybe it would be sound-proof and the dilemma imposed by phone ringing outside the stall would be eliminated. It'd be existential: Does a phone really ring if no one hears it ring?

And there are further dilemmas: do you take the phone with you into the bathroom? Do you then actually talk on the phone. Ewww... And yet, I've noticed that when I take the phone into the bathroom, it seems to have a prophylactic effect--I'm suddenly protected from invasive phone calls.

So by working through my dilemma, writing out loud as it were, I think I've solved it. I'll just put all the phones in all the bathrooms. The phone will never ring while I'm in there. They will eventually go dead because they run out of battery life. And that will solve the secondary problem of having to run to the bathroom to pick up the phone when I'm everywhere else the other 99% of my day.

What a relief! I feel so much better. Nothing like solving the world's problems, one existential crisis at a time.