Comps to the bathrooms at Arizona Stadium for having waterless urinals. I’m often frustrated that they’re not more common out here. Although they’re so tightly spaced they might as well have stuck with a trough.

They also had a sink I hadn’t seen since 4th grade. My elementary school had one huge sink that both boys and girls used to wash their hands. It was a 10 foot circlular basin with a fountain in the middle and a ring on the bottom that you stepped on to activate. When you stepped on the ring water would spray out in every direction to the edge of the basin.

So the men’s room had two of these, each much smaller and only a half circle. We were there for band day so it was mostly teenage boys and younger.

My son has a bladder a rat would be embarassed by, so I had lots of chances to observe people using it. It was interesting to watch them try and activate it. Generally they assumed it was automatic and flailed their arms about. Then they touched a bolt on top of the fountain. Eventually they gave up and moved over to the other one, which is already more effort than I put into washing my hands at that age.. Sometimes a parent would activate the first one and they hustled back to it. When I clued in a few of them to try their foot, they looked down at the bar, then back at me, back at the bar, back at me. They hesitantly tapped the bar with their foot while twisting their backs away from the fountain, to shield themselves from Empire Strikes Back bolts of power that were apparently going to shoot forth. Instead, water came pouring out every nozzle and they shot a big smile back to me as if they had just discovered the secret of life. And I happen to agree that little moments of joy like that are a pretty big part of that secret.

Moments of joy like this one, later in the same day. While watching one of the bands Isaac insistently tugged on my arm, “daddy daddy daddy!” he said urgently, like when he really has to go potty really bad, or when he figures something out on his own and is super proud of it. “Yes son?” “What was the tall robots name in Star Wars?” Glad that was so important son. :)