When I enter a public bathroom, and the only available stall is a handicapped-accessible stall, I pause and wonder about the ethics of what I'm about to do. Then I enter the stall anyway, and feel mildly uncomfortable that I'm sitting in a stall the size of a medium-sized kitchen or large walk-in closet. I sit there, half-expecting three topless women to wave fans in my face and feed me grapes. Either that, or to see a hand reaching under the door and presenting me with some kind of parking ticket, perhaps fining me fifty bucks for being in violation of some sort of anti-squatting law.
The question is: should handicapped bathroom stalls be left open at all times to accommodate handicapped people? My gut response is: let the bastards wait like the rest of us. For some reason, though, when there's a line of ten or twenty occupied stalls in a bathroom, and only one free handicapped stall, I may actually wait to use a non-handicapped stall.
Perhaps the situation is morally equivalent to being in a hurry at a grocery store and deciding to park in the handicapped space. If you're driving around because you need a bandage for a large, open wound, I don't think anyone's going to shoot you because your license plate fails to include an official legal designation.
It occurs to me that the solution to the handicapped bathroom stall ethics problem is simple. Equip wheelchairs with built-in port-o-johns. These people really don't need to be put through the trouble of getting out of their wheelchairs when they can just as easily shit where they sit. The toilet receptacle can easily fit underneath them between the wheels, and I'm sure there's a scientist somewhere who could figure out how to turn human feces into energy. (The aftermath of a good pasta dinner should be enough to power one electric wheelchair for a whole day.) The rest of us get hounded about conserving natural resources; I don't see why someone should be exempt just because they've lost the function of their legs. The worst thing that could happen to a handicapped person "on the run" is constipation. But think of it this way: it's the perfect excuse for being late to a job interview. ("Sorry, my wheelchair wouldn't start because I didn't eat enough fiber.")
There may be a couple obstacles to putting my plan into practice. The first, how to get a handicapped person's pants down to use their wheelchair toilet, could be easily solved with the fabrication of handicapped pants fitted with a special ass hole. I assume that most of these people are sitting around all day anyway, so the only way anyone's going to know that their ass is partially exposed is if the handicapped person accidentally runs off a curb or something and falls out of the wheelchair. Since this has to be a relatively rare occurrence, I'm sure insurance companies could develop policies to cover it. (If I were an actuary, I'd call it an "em-bare-ass-ment clause".)
The other obstacle to the plan is that even with an ass hole, most handicapped people will want some privacy anyway. But since the whole point of this plan is to eliminate handicapped bathroom stalls, I say we just install a dark, relatively non-translucent curtain in the corner of the bathroom. Handicapped people would be lucky. Since a curtain doesn't require plumbing, it could actually be hung anywhere. For example, if you walked past the cubicle of a wheelchair-bound guy at work and you noticed that his curtain was pulled across, you'll know that he's busy but he ain't out to lunch.
If you were really nice, maybe you'd even chuck him a newspaper.
