We are currently a nation up in arms about the suddenly critical issue of which restroom transgender people should use — the one matching the sex to which they were born, or the one with which they identify.

People have talked pedophiles and privacy, and no less than the president has weighed in on the side of basic dignity for everyone — in particular, the suddenly much-talked-about transgender community.

All of which made me wonder what it's like to be Ashley Brundage right now — a sort of hometown canary in a coal mine at an interesting time in history.

We first talked last year as yet another LGBT wall was quietly crumbling, a small but significant one. MacDill Air Force Base was hosting a pride luncheon — its first big gay pride event — and asked her to be the keynote speaker. Ashley Brundage, born Todd, was honored.

Hers is a telling story of being transgender in an evolving world.

She transitioned in 2010, and while looking for a job, "was very clear with anyone I was interviewing with that I was a transgender woman." Or, what she calls her whole, true and authentic self.

"No one had any idea what I was talking about five years ago in terms of introducing myself and explaining what transgender was," she says.

She was hired by PNC Bank — notably, before the whole world had watched Bruce Jenner become Caitlyn and even middle America was talking transition. Since then, she has risen at PNC to become an inclusion consultant with a focus on diversity of all stripes — women, blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans, young and old, gay people, people with disabilities, veterans and military members. "My absolute dream job," she calls it.

The bank touts her involvement at work and in the world: Brundage, married 13 years and raising two sons, speaks at colleges, big companies and major hospitals, education being a step toward understanding. She's been involved in the gay and lesbian chamber of commerce, the film festival, the St. Pete Pride Parade. Last year, the city of Tampa officially commended her for community outreach, a moment she would not have imagined in a million years.

At a recent event in New York, Brundage said a passing hello to Laverne Cox, who plays an inmate on the women's prison series Orange Is the New Black on Netflix and who was the first transgender person to make the cover of Time magazine. That was two years ago, with the headline: The Transgender Tipping Point: America's next civil rights frontier.

Yes, it's exciting to see press coverage and movement, Brundage says when I ask. "Though I will tell you for me, personally, it always boils back to the education that's needed. Just because one person sees it on a magazine cover doesn't mean that's what's happening in the real world."

There is this thing she does: When she's out and about, she almost always wears her PNC name tag. It tells strangers she represents a brand and a big company. It gives her a sense of validity and purpose. "A little more oomph," she says.

Some days you need a thicker skin. She goes to dinner at places she knows are inclusive. She is conscious of everything she does.

"People have a general fear of the unknown," she says.

And about that bathroom issue, currently at a medium boil across America?

"Transgender people have been using the bathroom for numerous years. You just didn't realize it," she says.

And: "It's really not that big of a deal," she says, which, a few more years down the road, could actually be true.

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@tampabay.com.