Of Chamberpots and Outhouses
Indoor plumbing is a wonderful invention. I would not care to live without it. Even though to this semi-feminist, the price for the convenience is a little steep. That cost is the fact that I do all the toilet cleaning in my abode. Another person of the opposite gender, otherwise known as husband, shares the facilities. To my knowledge, he has never stooped to wipe a spot from the porcelain throne since his release from the Navy nearly fifty years ago. I am assuming that he pulled some latrine duty in his service to our country, though he has never admitted it. I further assume that to do so would acknowledge that he does know how to perform this chore.
I am aware that my situation is not unique among most of our married friends and relatives. Which leads me to a question. How do single men deal with bathrooms? Can the seemingly almost universal male aversion to bathroom sanitation be one of the reasons for their desire to live with a woman, even when they have no desire to marry her?
I further ask, how did this bathroom iniquity come about? In my early years, actually until after I was graduated from high school, I never lived in a home with indoor facilities. The ‘little house behind the house’ served the need when nature’s call must be answered. Men usually built and maintained these necessary adjuncts to country life. Once when a new outhouse was needed, I don’t remember what happened to the old one, my Dad built us a new one. Made of aromatic new slabs from the sawmill, it was a spacious two seater. Unfortunately, we moved soon after he built it so we didn’t get to enjoy the ambiance very long.
Additional pondering on the evolution of sanitation chores brings to mind some of my reading in historically accurate fiction and nonfiction. I remember that, come morning, indoor plumbing’s predecessor, the enamel chamber pot, was usually removed from the house by women and children. Or in homes of the wealthy, by servants. Perhaps this is the answer to why the woman in modern households seems to be the designated keeper of the commode.
Further mulling on waste removal (I must have been a sanitation worker in another life) brings back the perhaps better forgotten fact that in the Dark Ages, the chamber pot’s contents were dumped in the street, often from second-floor windows. If presented with a choice, return to this odious custom or don vinyl gloves and scrub brush for a daily bathroom offensive, the answer is a no-brainer.
Especially since modern cleaners practically do the job for you, according to their ads. When their magic is done, a luxurious, relaxing, scented bath is called for. Incense wafting through the soft glow of candles and real or silk flowers surrounding milady’s home spa banish thoughts of the morrow, when all must be done again.
©2005 Sylvia Nickels
