It’s no secret girls love going to bar bathrooms in teams. Men ask women all the time why they can’t take a trip to the toilet alone, and it’s doubtful they have ever received a clear answer. The truth is, women can go to the bathroom alone. They just prefer not to.

Bathroom trips for guys are simple. Go in, pee, wash hands (hopefully) and get out. But to a girl, the bathroom is so much more than a toilet.

The obvious

Bathroom gossip is no covert operation. Everyone knows girls blab about guys in the bathroom … and other girls … but mostly guys. Whether it’s a chat held during a team tinkle (many stalls require a door holder) or in front of the mirror, girls are not just gabbing about who is cute and who isn’t. They do that, too, but it gets deeper than that. Girls seek the wise advice of their friends about whether she should go home with the kid from psychology class or drunk-dial her ex-boyfriend.

Even more obvious

Girls always bring tools out with them. Beauty tools, that is. Although it is just as easy to glob on lip gloss while standing at the bar, its more fun to round up the gal pals and take a trip to the bathroom to do it. That way, girls can reassure each other that the black, smudged eyeliner below their eyes is extremely sexy, and they still looked just as hot as when they walked into the bar.

What guys might not know

Home base

Being at the bar is sometimes like a game of tag, and a game of tag is only fair if there is a goal. Whether you pronounced it “gool” or “goal” when you played tag as a kid, you know that it is a place – a tree, a rock, a stump – where no one can get you. At bars, the bathroom is a girl’s home base. When the creepy guy is getting a little bit too creepy, she can disappear into the lavatory for however long she wants until making a inconspicuous comeback. This often requires girls to go to the bathroom alone, which is not the preferable method for potty trips. But when she needs to avoid getting tagged, she’ll sacrifice. At least she can check herself out while she’s in there hiding.

An amicable haven

The bathroom is the one and only place at a bar where girls will make friends with each other. Have you ever seen a girl compliment another girl in the middle of the bar? Rarely. It happens in the bathroom all the time. It’s the bathroom effect – girls are all of a sudden nice, sympathetic and they love everyone’s shoes. Unless someone is trying to cut in the bathroom line, girls are genuinely polite to one another. There’s no conversation privacy. So even the girls who are actually using the toilets know if someone just got dumped or if a girl’s man is talking to another chick. Then it becomes a girl-power session. If a girl is having problems, she will always be told by at least one stranger that she is beautiful and way too good for that guy.

If bathroom walls had ears, they could write a best-selling book on gossip, because that’s about all they would hear. As much as guys may like to imagine that girls go to the bathroom to make out with each other, that only happens once in a great while. It’s too bad bathrooms don’t have eyes.

Views expressed in this humor column do not necessarily reflect the Northern Star or its staff. Send questions or comments to [email protected].