Bathroom Humor.

About half a century ago when I lived in Morningside Heights, right in the shadow of Columbia University, the neighborhood had Ph.D.s roaming the streets, like Mastodons during the Miocene.

There were still independent bookstores back in those days. The cavernous one that served the students of Columbia, Barnard, the Jewish Theological Institute and half-a-dozen other academies in America's Athens was called Salter's.

There were people working there who looked down on me. And why shouldn't they? I was a lowly Master's candidate. If I needed a book on Latin Grammar or on animal husbandry in Hardy's England, well, that made me hardly worth talking to.

Through the years I've worked at a lot of good agencies with a lot of smart people. But back in those days, there were homeless people living along Broadway who were better read than most agency CEOs are today.

Early one morning, I ran down to the Columbia University subway stop on the #1 IRT train which was beautifully decorated in Columbia sky-blue and white. Forget about Nobel Prize Winners teaching just a few hundred feet away. That subway stop sealed the deal for thousands of matriculating students.

The subway back then cost just fifty cents--and you still had to buy good old-fashioned subway tokens with a giant Y cut out of the middle. Sunday's were half-fare, as well. So if you took your girlfriend back to Grand Central, you could get back to campus at no extra charge. In other words, you could get mugged and/or assaulted at a good bargain-basement price.

How I miss those days.

As I was walking on the subway platform for the appropriate place to stand--I knew the system well-enough so that I knew where the doors would open and which cars would be least occupied, I saw a great piece of graffiti scrawled on the tiles.

I'll admit, I'm old-fashioned. I never took to calling graffiti "street art." But once in a while you'd see or read something that scaled those Olympian peaks. It read:

Not long ago, my niece, Alexa, who is a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was interviewed by a local reporter. Philadelphia has just opened the second of what will eventually be six public toilets.

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/philly-phlush-city-opens-public-restrooms/3602476/

In these ossified days, that qualifies as a major government achievement. A city of 1.5 million will have six public restrooms. At least until they turn into brothels or crack-dens. 

Of course, I taught my daughters, and they taught their cousin the graffiti above. They each reminded me that I did that. Erudition is our tradition.

The rewards of parenthood aren't often apparent. We work hard and don't get a lot of lovingkindness back. That's normal and natural. As a child, I probably gave even less to my parents.

But I taught my kids something.

For that, they are thankful. As am I.

I think.