Tuesday, January 3, 2012

never take for granted...

i bet from the title, you were thinking i was going to go deep on this post. talk about never taking our loved ones or our health for granted. you thought wrong, my friend. my last post had some depth, so i couldn't go there again so soon.

no, what i'm talking about today is toilet paper. i got a book out of the kids science section about the history and workings of toilets (i love the library and the gems i find there).

here's a picture i took of a page in the book that left me with my mouth in a cringe and my eyebrows in a pinch.

in case you can't read it clearly, let me point out a few pertinent bits. "Ancient Romans used a sponge on the end of a stick to clean up after using the toilet." this seemed all right to me initially. a sponge is soft and wet. okay, the romans had a good idea there other than the fact that they had a room filled with toilet holes all in a U shape so several people could go at once while looking at each other.

but the next line stopped me in my sponge-happy tracks. "When finished, they put the sponge in a pail full of water so that the next person could use it."

great googly moogly..... this is NOT okay! they shared a poop sponge?!! not so bad if you're the first guy with a fresh sponge, but something tells me it didn't get changed too often. and i know how gross a kitchen sponge gets after a few days, so i can only imagine how vile a community hiney sponge would be after a few days on booty duty!

the next line that had me making faces was, "Some used stones, sand, or seashells to scrape themselves clean."

a rock? did they hunt about for the perfect butt scraping rock and then keep it for using over and over? or did they just grab up any ole rock they could reach while squatting and just jam it back there and try to knock off the big bits? would a rounded or jagged rock work more effectively?

and i don't know about you, but when i'm at the beach and get sand in my suit, i pretty much just rip my suit to the side and try to shake, swipe or rinse it out with little regard for who's about because i cannot STAND how it feels! imagine using sand as a wipe! i've heard of using sand to wash dishes in a pinch, but never your crack. Ick!

the worst part in that sentence might be the seashell. i was just at the beach a couple months ago and i collected and examined a lot of different types of shells, so when i read this, i did a mental inventory of the shapes, sizes and textures of various shells, trying to figure out which seemed the most wipe-like for bum scrape-age.
this one seems somewhat manageable, i guess. you could use one side for scooping and the other side for buffing after the scrape was completed.
and i would definitely avoid this next shell, even if it was the only thing readily at hand. because, wowie zowie, i don't think anyone's rump could handle that.

this book made me very grateful for the lovely and delicate luxury that i've always taken for granted. oh blessed, glorious toilet paper, you are so precious to me. and your cousin, the moist, flushable wipe, is a gift to the behinds of this century. i will never take either of you for granted again. amen.

21 comments:

  1. Sherilin, this is the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. You ALWAYS make me laugh.

    Your Aunt Joan

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  2. yeah, as a kid were you ever stuck in the can, and nobody could hear you as you were screaming for a fresh roll, so you had to peel apart the cardboard roll and use it and...

    wait...nevermind.

    Fresh, big leaves. couldn't anyone have just had a cabbage sitting in the outhouse or something????

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  3. no wonder the sponge was on a stick. besides the romans were so barbaric poop on a stick,ppfffppp, whats that?

    isn't homeschooling great? you would not find that on any curriculum.

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  5. Good thing I did not have your name for Christmas!!

    I would have def wrapped up a nice, smooth shell just for you!

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  6. karen, i totally remember that toilet screaming as a kid! however, i never used the roll. probably because i never thought of it. but when i was cleaning houses, i had a young boy's bathroom i was cleaning & i found a ripped up roll poo-glued to the bottom of the trashcan. yeah, i guess you aren't the only one who did that.

    melissa, homeschooling is great! i love being able to come up with my own ideas of what makes interesting education.
    also, thanks to you & karen for feeling the outrage for me over the lack of available health care for us poor folks in the good old capitalistic u. s. of a. on my last post. people get their knickers all in a twist at the prospect of having some of their income go toward helping the health of the dregs of society. apparently i fall into the dregs category even though we're part of the faithfully working class, just without insurance options.

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  7. This is honestly awesome stuff. I'm so glad that we have toilet paper these days, you're right that this wasn't the kind of thing I expected but so what? It made me laugh so thanks for that Sherilin! :)

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  8. Enthralling stuff!

    Just loved that last shell!

    How about an info post about snot?

    Not the soft or bubbly stuff, mind you. I mean those hard little boogers that lodge themselves at the edge of the nasal cavity and irritate the living daylights out of you with that incessant clicking noise they make as you in- and exhale. Frustrating you so much that you end up snorting almost continuously in an attempt to get it out.

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  9. OMG, that is some crazy stuff!!! A seashell? I couldn't even imagine. Or sand? What was wrong with those people? I mean, weren't there any soft leaves laying around?

    Definitely needed a laugh this morning so thank you for this!!!

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  10. I feel like I'm being home-schooled just by reading your blog. Thanks for the education as well as the crisp mental images!

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  11. This is hilarious! I guess we really do take toilet paper for granted. The prickly shell made me laugh to tears!

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  12. OMGGGGGGGGG

    Can I repost this as like a guest blog or something on my site? This is too fitting to bumbumgerms to not repost. :D

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  13. The community sponge sounds gross! And rocks and seashells? Ouch!

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  14. Oh gawd, I need to go bleach out my seashells STAT. Not that we use them like that, ewwww. Rather to get that bad visual out of my head. Oh that's disgusting. The word scrape just put it over the edge.....

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  15. One word, a horrible, horrible word: hemorrhoids.

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  16. I would rather use your bottom seashell (heh-heh), I mean the one you pictured, than someone else's nasty-arsed poop sponge. Crikey.

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  17. From what I have seen and heard about health insurance, hospitals etc. it is so scary!

    I mean, I cannot imaging holding a policy that we would pay like 700 hundred a month for a being denied for some crazy reason. or the fear of, WHAT IF? what if i sprain my ankle? what if I did what I did to my shoulder there? jeez. I mean I saw Dr.s in the ER for just changing my meds so I didnt have to drive to my dr. office in the next city. the countless times I have been with my kids to get glass taken out of their feet, or gigantic massive 1 inch splinters inbedded into my 2 year olds, hand that needed surgery.......or my 3 year old son who got a old metal cookie cutter stuck on his thumb that they put him under general anesthetic to remove the dumb thing. I cannot imagine the stress.

    or my kidney stone lithotrupsy done? people complain cuz we have to wait...for an hour or 4 at the hospital. or some hospitals are so busy beds in the hallways...you know I would rather have muy butt hanging in the hallway than have a 75 thousand dollar bill that is going to render my family destitute....something has to be done. there are so many cultural differences and rights, and fears about a universal healthcare plan in the states that the fear of change out weighs the ability to see the benefits it has. and of course the hospitals being run as profitable businesses......shame.

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  18. That's kind of a relief, because I thought the Ancient Romans used Visigoths. Which I bet goes a long way toward explaining why they got so hacked off, they burned Rome down, plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, and gave us modern Italian politics (but Sophia Loren, too, so there's a bright side).
    Don't be so hard on Caesar and the boys. They used piss to clean their togas, too.
    Now, I'm off to the beach. I just had a big bowl of bran.

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  19. This idea of the reusable butt sponge. . . sooooooo vile.

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  20. i almost barfed in my mouth too...my ass is NOT sharing a sponge

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don't let me be the only one doing the talking around here. spill your guts!