Saturday, May 02, 2015

automated bathrooms

A couple of months back I was in a store or restaurant bathroom with NJ and he stuck his hands under the sink expecting it to automatically come on.  He knows how manual sinks work—our house bathroom sink is a typical manual one—but he is accustomed enough to automated sinks in businesses that it makes sense to him to expect one.  In related news, I am feeling old.

This has to be something that all parents face with some regularity, but it is always odd to realize how different things are for my kids' generation compared to mine.  This is not in the interest of viewing one generation as superior, or spoiled, or disadvantaged.  This is just in the interest of comparing experiences.

There are more obvious differences as well.  My kids will grow up with different music than I did, with different TV shows than I did, and with the Internet.  For whatever reason, the ready availability of automated sinks in store bathrooms throughout their lifetime is what strikes a chord with me.

1 comment:

Jason said...

As bathrooms became more automatic, I noticed there were four main things that were involved: Urinals (and toilets), faucets, soap, and hand dryers. For a long time I tried to find a bathroom that had all of them. Soap is the least common one, but even finding bathroom that had automatic urinals, faucets, and hand dryers was (and actually, still is) harder than you'd think. For years I would notice in most bathrooms I went in if any of those were automated, hoping to find the golden bathroom (that might not be the best term I've ever invented) that would be fully automated, but never succeeding. Sadly, one day a couple years after that, I realized that at some point I had stopped checking, and that almost certainly somewhere in those couple years, I had encountered and used a golden bathroom, without even knowing it or being able to appreciate the completion of an unimportant, but very fun, quest I had at that time of my life. Tragic, I know.