Pretty as a Privy

When new public bathrooms were built in the embattled little Opal Whitely Park, people worried.

Public restrooms are indeed a much needed public work, but making them freely available comes with its own set of worries.

Drugs, odors, sex, filth, graffiti, germs, vandalism. Most of us simply want to go to the bathroom, but some of us see the restrooms as a place to do much more than that.

There are all manner of solutions that attempt to help avoid these and other problems associated with public restrooms. The American Restroom Association has all sorts of advice.

But here in GroveAtopia we had our own solution and I think you will agree it is the kindest of all. To discourage would-be vandals from ruining these public bathrooms, the Art Guild took a few afternoons and painted pretty little pictures all the way around each restroom.

You can only see a few of the pictures in this photo. Each restroom has about 15 pictures, each one bright and unique, each one hand painted by one of several artists.

The restrooms were painted back in June when the Garden Club was busy making the park look pretty. I wrote about it then, but I think you'll agree the real test with a project like this is how it looks months later. I am happy to report that 4 months later, the privy pictures remain untouched.

Painting these pictures in the bathrooms was really a dare. Their pretty little designs, the fish, the bluebird on a fence post, the iris, are more than just that. What they are saying in their quiet, pretty little way is, " Go ahead. I dare you. Deface me. Scrawl your graffitti all over me. I bet, big and tough and defiant as you are you can't bear to harm pretty little me."

How annoying that would be for the person hell bent on saying what they must in this most public way, to encounter this row of quiet beauty and find out they just can't do it. They can't deface this work.

I like to think after the annoyance and perhaps anger has passed, that the would-be vandals have at least a moment of pause where they ask themselves why, and realize they do have a limit and these little pictures have shown them just that. That in the face of human effort and beauty, even the most angry heart, even as the spray can is raised, finger on the button, will lower the can, take the finger off the button, and toss the can in the trash.

It doesn't always happen this way, but it sure is nice when it does.

Sometimes beauty wins.