I don't know why these things happen to me.
We're in Sussex (England) now, and I have my usual bus-phobia-in-a-new-place syndrome. This means that I'm scared to go on a bus to a new place on my own.
With a lot of encouragement from everyone here, I decided to get over it this time once and for all, and make it on my own to a sheep farm I wanted to see (while Mr. S was away on a big challenging Rambler walk).
So I got there. I took the bus with no big events, I loved the sheep farm and planned to return to our hotel by bus with no major events. I got to the right bus stop, was waiting for the bus back with other would-be passengers when I felt like I was going to have to pee badly soon. By that I mean that if the bus came within the next five minutes I would be OK becuase I could hold it for the 15 or so minutes it would take for the bus to get back to Seaford where we're staying.
After five minutes went by and there was no bus and the pressure in my bladder mounted, I began considering my options: what were my chances for waiting for another five minutes and still feel like I could make it to a toilet even if the bus came? Was there somewhere nearby in the bushes where I could try to go? The answers were, respectively: "very small" and "no."
The dilemma was solved with my feet as they instinctively and rapidly led me away from the bus stop toward a set of buildings about a five-minute walk away. I got to one building and was directed to a small coffee shop about another five minutes down the road.
I was starting to feel like I was going to pee in my pants by the time I rushed through the coffee shop doors and asked a woman at the counter for a bathroom. As I headed for the toilet, I half noticed that all the clientele seemed quite elderly. No matter; I was approaching toilet paradise.
I got there and discovered that I couldn't find the light switch in or outside the bathroom. I couldn't leave the door open, so I felt for the toilet, found it and did my business in it right in time. Then I found the way out of the bathroom through a crack of light coming in through the bottom of the door. I opened it and reached back to flush the toilet. There was one of these pull ropes to flush the toilet and I pulled it.
My sudden relief at the end of my close call was interrupted by a loud siren that went off through the building and a red blinking light in the bathroom. Yup--you guessed it--I had pulled an emergency alarm in the bathroom instead of flushing the toilet.
I realized that just as a woman frantically ran toward the bathroom.
"There's no alarm," I said.
"Yes, there is," she said.
"No, it was me," I said. "Sorry, I thought it was the flusher. I couldn't find the light in the bathroom."
"The light switch is down here," she said, pointing to the now very visible light switch halfway down the wall. She walked in and deactivated the alarm. "This is a bathroom for handicapped people." She looked at me with disgust, shook her head and rushed out as fast as she came in.
Well, that all explains the elderly clientele and the need for an alarm in the bathroom.
I was about to leave when I felt an unstoppable and uncanny desire to "flush" the toilet again. Can you imagine? Can you imagine that woman rushing in again?
Did you ever feel like that--doing something totally ridiculous just to see what would happen?
I didn't do it. I left, walked back to the bus stop and took an uneventful trip back to the hotel. Now that was easy.