Published February 7, 2001

My apologies if you're reading this over breakfast. You can, of course, just flip the page and proceed with less squeamish reading. Otherwise .

Well, it's just that an item in the weekend's papers described how vendors in Baguio's public market have volunteered to fund the repair and management of the public toilets in that busy commercial hub has reminded this corner of the subject. Public toilets, that is.

It's subject that has been lurking around, literally. Ten or more years ago in fact, few people cared, or dared, to talk about it openly. Even if the need to comfortably relieve oneself outside of one's home is an emergency that confronts everyone sometime and somewhere, the lack of such a facility to do so in had been studiously avoided. One did not talk about that like a marketing list or some similar family travail.

But, in the years since the country has attempted to cash in on the dollars of tourism, the need for clean public toilets has become fair agenda in government and private boardrooms. It might still be treated gingerly, but it no longer is like a side issue better left in whispered discussions.

And why not? The necessity to comfort oneself - Is that why toilets are euphemistically referred to as comfort rooms, restrooms, etc? - while on the road or some such excursion outside of the home does arise despite all preparations to avoid the contingency. Recall, you know . . . that last time? And what did you manage?

Hereabouts, I would guess you would have begged some roadside gas station, restaurant, hotel even, or private residence to accommodate your need. If not that, there may have been an unlucky patch of tall grass available. What a downer that was. Right?

A lot of people I know would rather try to hold whatever and hope to reach familiar quarters to unload. It's never a sure prospect. And when the hopefully unthinkable happens, one prays for the next best thing - a toilet that somehow approximates the familiar provisions of home.

We are a fastidious people, taking pride in doing our usual rites in the most sanitary cubicles, no matter how humble. Which is why the absence of similar amenities are an aggravation. But such has been our national neglect that the acceptable place to ease oneself is not generally available.

I myself have been not rarely so visited. But for the rare and accommodating whatever or whoever, I'd say that I could have added to the general foul pollution. (You can stop reading on again.)

Where has all this ink taken us thus far? If you are still with us, to that suggestion that we should, have to, come to really address the matter. Talk of public toilets.

Let's go back to that matter of toilets in the city market. Most of us will flinch from the topic. There might be levels of acceptability, in so far as sanitation and overall standards might be concerned. And yet, at the so-called end of a standard, the measure has to be whether or not we of the city can and will avail ourselves of what is available. You do, or you don't.

It's like this: When you leave home and therefore undertake to do as you would, to do the everyday marketing, or to travel outside, or simply to conduct some humble business, do you expect to find somewhere out there the room for comfort or comfortable room.

In the end, the whole matter festers down to whether public toilets are eventually of priority to all. Where does one pee or poo, and how does one do either so that public safety and propriety are not offended? That done, is one assured that the necessary function can be performed equally well by the rest?

An uncle of mine has a quick answer. His recommendation is to stay home. Period. That will never happen. Not for the likes of us who have to venture out every so often, and most times beyond the ready availability of the comforts of home.

We suggest this, then: That a culture of providing for, maintaining and forever attending to the basic and unscheduled contingencies be put in place.

The result: Public convenience, available all day and for all. Public toilets.