Home, Final Thoughts

And now I am back to the routine of taking one or the other kid to school and getting ready for MY classes, which technically started last week (the online ones did, and therefore the whining began as well--I was dealing with that all last week while in England: sigh) but my senior seminar on Hegel starts on Monday so I will have to gird my loins for that this weekend. Two final thoughts about the difference between my brief stay in Oxford and my life in Flint: Oxford's stores have no public toilets, drinking fountains and handicapped access was worse than minimal. Many's the time I was beyond distressed, looking for a toilet to use, parched to the point of being seriously uncomfortable and worried about the fate of people who were struggling with wheelchairs or physical impairments. I was shocked. The toilet situation would be against federal law in the U.S. Every store either must have a public toilet or allow a customer access to the toilet used by the shop workers or they can be sued by the customer. (I know this because I worked in a shop while an undergraduate and our manager DRILLED us on toilet access law weekly to make sure we never put the store at risk of lawsuit.) I kept thinking back to when I was pregnant have needing to use a toilet about every 20 minutes--where do women GO in England? If that country was invaded by Americans, the Americans would be pissing on the shop floors in protest, I guarantee it. The other was the safety of the city. Of course this WAS Oxford which I was starting to think was England's version of Disneyworld, not the grubbiest part of London, but I didn't feel at all anxious walking around back to my hotel after dark, and that was a stretch of well over a mile, maybe nearer 2 miles, and there have been times I have been worried about being shot through the walls of my house in Flint. It's interesting what civil rights people will demand get respected and others they will allow to be trampled.