That's No Bull!

It was along Highway 50 in Nevada - "America's Loneliest Road" - that I pulled into the sho' nuff' honest-to-God old fashioned roadhouse. You just don't see those any more, and after a hot and dry hundred and fifty miles and a visit to the Shoe Tree (which I have learned was just cut down by vandals), I was ready for a break and some lunch.

The building was a Hollywood set and the staff was right out of central casting: the barkeep was a skinny, bowlegged cowboy with a handlebar mustache on his face and a "Howdy" on his lips. The cook was a pretty little gal with a ready smile and a fast hand on the grill. I sat down and ordered a burger and a root beer and with a "Comin' right up" the slab was on the fire and the taters in the grease. By the way, you can call me a sissy but I follow the "no booze when you are riding on two wheels" rule, as given the number of cagers out there who seem to have as their singular purpose in life the goal of running me over, I have enough diffculty staying alive without adding my alcohol addled brain to the mix.

So I drank my sody, watched Ms. Grill Gal work her magic on my meal and listened as a city slicker hit on her. There was some construction going on down the road and some pretty boys from DownTown were pretending to be roughnecks. Funny. She handled him with grace and charm and the song "Brandy" by Looking Glass kept going through my mind (listen to it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-tRXewCAmU). Following this delightful entertainment my meal came, I chowed down with gusto, and had fun people-watching as other folks slowly drifted in.

After licking my plate clean of any possible trace of french fries (a rare treat for this middle-aged, pre-hypertensive white boy) it was time for this Mysterious Stranger to empty his bladder, wash his hands, and head off into the Sunset.

I asked Cowboy Bob behind the bar to direct me towards the toilet; he pointed to the next room and said "It's just behind the pool table, to the left." So I headed on over to the next room, opened the door to the left of the pool table and just as I stepped in I thought to myself, "Funny, there's a bull on that door over there but this one here has a cow on it."


You ever those moments when even as the brain is screaming important information you still go ahead and do something stupid? Those moments are getting more frequent for me - I guess as you age the doggone processor slows down.

So of course as the door closed behind me I was standing in a sparkling clean, pink-frilly, not a friggin'-urinal-in-sight bathroom. I had, in all my leather clad, motorcycle riding, masculine glory, just stepped into the ladies room, clearly marked by a sign with a Cow ... not a Bull.


Merde.


Great. City-boy don't know the difference between a cow and a bull. Except he does, having been shipped out to a farm for a year. But that doesn't do any good if city-boy's perspective is different from Cowboy Bob. My understanding of "behind the pool table" was different from that of the proprietor of the establishment and I had just followed instructions ... obviously incorrectly, much to my consternation.

I now had a decision to make: stay and go, or go and go. Scheise. I thought to myself, "I'm here and nothing's going to change that fact - I can't unmake my decision. And how much worse could it get (I made sure to lock the door to avoid it getting any worse)?" So I lifted the seat (wife and daughter's have trained me well), finished the business at hand, flushed and closed the seat and lid (did I ever say how scared I am of wife and daughters?), stalled for time as I washed my hands and then finally opened the lock and prepared to walk into a room full of smirking derision.

But nothing happened. No looks, no laughs, no snarky comments, not even a glance my way. And as I moseyed out the door (you always mosey in a western Roadhouse), I was reminded of two things: 1) generally speaking, most people don't give a hoot about the dumb stuff you do so long as it ain't dangerous; 2) clear communication is EVERYTHING!

Relative to number 1, most of us worry a great deal about things that just don't matter. Because our world revolves around us, we assume that everyone else's world revolves around us as well. But it just ain't so ... their worlds revolve around them, so about 999.9 times out of 1000, other folks really aren't paying attention.

As to number 2, when training in grad school we role-played techniques for establishing clarity in communication: repeating, re-phrasing, double and even triple checking .... all to make sure that we really understood what the other person was saying. We practiced these technique because communication is actually a very complicated process involving numerous opportunities for screw up between what is actually meant and what is heard and understood. Language, perspective, inflection ... a million tiny concepts go into communicating effectively, and if any of those gets misunderstood, the whole thing gets wacky. Even something as simple as walking into the correct restroom.

Kind of like the NASA project a few years ago, when they forgot to convert metric measurements into SAE measurements and missed their target by - oh, about a million miles!

This was a great reminder of how important clarity in communication really is, whether one is at the negotiating table, trying to understand another's point of view, or just trying to find a toilet.

So, stomach full, bladder empty, dignity somewhat rumpled and humility re-established, I continued my mosey to the bike, fired it up, DID NOT drop it in the parking lot and headed on down the road, laughing at my own foibles and thankful for a beautiful day. You see, if on any given day the worst communicaton error you make is to walk into the wrong toilet, it's a heck of a good day.