From my side of the curtain

I keep hearing people complain that television and computers are the reasons family members no longer communicate with each other. I think the communication problem is because there are too many bathrooms in homes nowadays.

Remember having to ask everyone in the house if he/she needed to use the facilities? Then, just as you were getting into the tub, a younger brother started pounding on the bathroom door. That always started a dialogue at our house. And all the pounding and yelling eventually brought my mother down the hall to join the conversation.

One bathroom for four kids and two adults also taught us about honor. The shower curtain was pulled to give each person privacy. No one on either side ever peeked.

If we'd had today's typical 2.7 bathrooms for every 3.2 people, I never would have been conscious of the genuine misery my five year old brother Joe endured when he was afraid of germs.

"Let me in!" he would plead. "I have to go to the bathroom!"

I'd unlock the door, pull the shower curtain closed, and yell, "Okay!"

Then I'd hear him washing his hands. (Though no one ever peeked, one couldn't avoid listening.)

"Thanks," he would sigh. "You know how many germs can get on you all at once? Zillions and zillions."

"If you make me get out of the tub again just so you can wash your hands, I'm going to pull your hair out," I'd say.

"Can't help it," he'd answer. "Germs can do worse things than sisters can."

"Don't bet on it," I'd threaten from my side of the curtain.

But I finally gave up locking the door when I was in the tub. My brother would have kicked the door down to get at the sink and soap. And my dad would have torn us apart if my brother's Roy Rogers boots had left a dent in the door.

Again and again from my side of the shower curtain I'd hear Joe's warfare against the germs. I realized his fear was real, and we talked about it from either side of the curtain.

Years later Joe explained the germ problem. We were seven years apart in age, but apparently Mother had used the same story to explain the "Birds and Bees." (Joe called her version "Germs and Sperms.") Mother had said that sperm were so tiny, they were like germs. Joe, with his own logic, concluded that sperm, like germs, were everywhere.

"Mother was expecting Susie then," my brother told me later. "I saw what germs had done to her. I didn't want that happening to me!"

If we hadn't shared that bathroom, I would have seen Mother rubbing his chapped little hands but never connected his phobia with our mother's unique style of sex education.

The house was small, but we knew each other well. We were a family.