Every word of the following cautionary tale is true. I know so because the cautioner texted the tale to me herself. (If you cannot believe a text, you cannot believe anything.)

Many of you know the texter in question. Some of you are her neighbors and may wish, after reading the full scale of the horrors within, to take certain precautions.

However, I cannot reveal her name because I pinky-swore that I wouldn’t. (Until then, I hadn’t realized a person could pinky swear by text messages. Modern technology is a marvel.) I think pinky-swearing means that she gets to break my pinky finger if I rat her out. And her aim, as is about to be revealed, is a bit unreliable, so while my pinky may be safe, other parts remain at risk.

This woman – let us call her “Jane,” as it would be good to call her something – and her husband were attending a very dignified dinner and Gospel concert with her in-laws when a matter of some urgency arose.

“I had to use the little room,” Jane told me, “but got distracted by getting a text on my cell phone.

“Anyway, after I accomplished my purpose for going into the little room by going into an even smaller little room, I opened the door to see in the mirror the backs of three men. I realized where I was. I was in the men’s little room!”

She wondered why she didn’t notice the difference in decor and, uh, wall hangings when she wandered in even if her eyes were glued to her text messages. She wondered if there were guys in the room when she walked in, guys who watched in wonder as she closed herself inside the even smaller little room.

Jane wondered how she would escape with her dignity. Forget dignity, she just wondered how she could escape.

She considered calling her husband out in the fancy restaurant theater but knew the men in the men’s room with her would hear a female voice coming from a hallowed place that it shouldn’t.

Then she tried texting him (a risk considering that texting was responsible for her predicament in the first place) but her fingers “were too rattled to cooperate.” She also forgot that he doesn’t have text messaging.

“So, I prayed, then looked under the door for shoes – big, black ones – all this time considering my options, like, ‘Gentlemen, we have an unfortunate situation here, and I think the best option for all of us is to close our eyes, count to five and then open them and forget this ever happened!’ – and of course that would be my chance to run.”

I assume Jane meant to keep her eyes open so as to find the correct door this time, but I cannot be sure about this detail.

“But, after a few minutes,” Jane said, “there was only one pair of big, black shoes left and they walked into the stall on the other side of me.

“Oh, this was just too weird!

“I knew this was my window and ran out of the room! And then, of course, when I opened the door, I was facing a long line of women waiting to get into the ladies’ room. Needless to say, I didn’t hang around to chat.”

Slinking back to her table, her blissfully unaware husband asked if everything had come out okay. She assured him that yes, she had.

“But halfway through the wonderful concert, while holding my husband’s hand, it dawned on me that I never did wash my hands!” she said.

There you have the whole sordid affair. It’s an error in direction that I suspect most of us started to make at one time or other in our lives, but few of us are so wrapped up that we blunder as far as Jane did before finding we need extrication.

The moral of this story is, of course, not only should you never text while driving, not only should you never text while operating heavy machinery, but you especially never should text while conducting urgent business.

Also, you may wish to be careful how you greet anyone you suspect of being “Jane,” what with the hasty retreat that bypassed the sink. But she says that honest, she has since washed her hands. Pinky-swear. It says so right here in her text.