Best thing I ever found in someone’s bathroom? A guestbook.

The first time I visited my father-in-law’s house, I found something surprising in his bathroom: A guestbook.

And I loved the idea of asking people to sign in while using the toilet so much that I soon bought a guestbook for my bathroom.

That was cool. 

Because over the next 25 years, that silly book collected some great memories for me, taking snapshots of people that a camera can’t capture. 

Photographs are great for recording faces, but if you want to record someone’s personality, ask them to write something. And if you want a real picture of someone's personality, I say have them write in the bathroom, where things are already getting real.

“Thank God I used it before Chris!” one family member wrote to tease another about the smells he leaves behind, while a Texan I knew in Washington State wrote proudly about his work on the toilet: “Had to vacate some Texas waste, hoping to give your house a distinctive Texas feel.”

And how did my father-in-law first decide to put his guestbook in the bathroom?

“I thought having someone sign a book that sat on a table was too much of a cliché, and that they would probably sign it on their own if they saw it while they sat on the toilet,” said Ruben, recalling that his wife at the time told him, “That’s stupid. No one’s going to sign it."

But he did put it in the bathroom and people did sign it, though not always in the ways Ruben would have liked.

“I wanted it to be in chronological order, but my sister once signed a page well out of order,” he said, recalling with even more consternation a time when one of the neighborhood kids signed his name as Clark Cable. “I told my son, tell him to get it right — it’s Gable!”

Ruben had used a standard guestbook not intended for the bathroom, but I found one online that was: Called “The Bathroom Guest Book,” it features fun facts called “privia,” and boxes for you to check off the tasks you accomplished.

I’m a bit embarrassed now to see how many of the entries were written by me — describing visits I made, my cat made, and one made by the only guest I recall flat-out refusing to leave his signature — and how many guests wrote that they only signed the book under duress. 

But I’m grateful for every entry, and most make me smile. Especially the one written by a longtime friend who was visiting me in Seattle with her first child.

“Great Play-doh,” Mechele wrote on behalf of her three-year-old son, who is now 23 and recently graduated from UCLA. But whenever I read that entry, I see the toddler we took to the Seattle Aquarium who waved at a scuba diver in one of the exhibits and was so excited when the man waved back that long afterward he would ask his mom, “When are we going back to Seattle see my diver again?!”

What I’m most grateful for though, are the entries that are a bit sad, written by people who are no longer in my life: One person died, others drifted away, and others will no longer speak to me. But I will always have their words in my book, and only wish now that I didn’t pack the book away for so many years when we left Seattle to return to California, because there are far too many signatures from loved ones and friends I missed.

So I’m glad I finally took the book out again this month and started collecting memories near the toilet once more, even though I had to convince half my guests to sign it.

Of the four recent visitors, the two women happily signed the book without being asked, while the two men had to be prodded. But I don’t care if signatures are voluntary; in fact, one of those reluctant signatures is my new favorite entry.

“I got caught in a white lie,” wrote one family member, because when told me he hadn’t noticed the book before being asked to sign it I said, “Oh, is that why I found your sunglasses in it?!”

So now that I have another entry to make me smile, I plan to never pack that book away again.