Thoughts

Recently a certain young lady who shall remain nameless was discussing the problem of a ring in her bathroom stool that refused to be cleaned off.  I told her how I discovered the wonders of a pumice stone, which easily and quickly gets rid of rust stains, hard-water rings, and so forth.  

Horrified, she said, "You mean you put your hands down in the water in the stool?!?!"

I had to collect my thoughts a bit before I told her, "Well, I guess you don't have to; you can just use the end of the pumice stone to scrape, and you'd be holding onto the other end."  

What I was thinking was, "What's the big deal about that?"

I raised two babies who only ever wore cloth diapers; disposables were just being invented when my daughter came along.  Wet diapers went straight into a diaper pail half-filled with water and detergent.  A poopie diaper was baptized in the bathroom stool and sloshed up and down.  Not only did my hands dip down into water in the commode, by the time I was finished they were flailing about in a genuine poop soup.  I'd hold onto the diaper and flush and, if it didn't need further rinsing, I'd wring it out with both hands and place it in the diaper pail.  Then I would flush again, and of course, thoroughly wash my hands.  

Now I'm thinking about the time some people who shall remain nameless had a grandchild visiting at their house and, when she needed changing, found they were out of wipes, which they seemed to think was a disaster.  Finally they resorted to using a couple of washcloths for the cleanup; They threw them in the garbage when they were through.

We didn't have wipes when my kids were babies.  We had washcloths, and nary a one got tossed.

Now, I tend to feel "holier-than-thou" on matters like this, but I realize it's just a different time, and we all follow the customs of the society in which we live.  For instance, if I explain to younger folks that all I had for a rest room when I was a kid (until I was twelve) was an out-door toilet, they cringe.  Especially when I tell them that you could look down in the holes and see a pile of everybody's poop down below.  In summer there were always spiders, and sometimes a snake lurking.  In winter?  You haven't felt a genuine draft until you are sitting in the outhouse when your bottom bared to the frigid winter air; and what a nuisance to have to put your coat on just to go relieve yourself.  Thank goodness for the covered chamber pot under my bed in winter!  Kudos to my mother, who took the pot to the toilet to dump it, and then scrubbed it clean.  

As I was pondering these things this morning, it made me wonder how my grandmothers rinsed the poop out of diapers, or even my mother when I was a kid.  With no indoor water, all water was brought into the house in buckets.  I suppose they had a certain dishpan or something for diaper-rinsing, but then they'd have to toss the stinky water outside or in the slop bucket on the back porch, and then clean out the pan so it wouldn't stink up the house.  

Now that I think about it, what did the Native Americans use for diapers two hundred years ago?

It's a wonderful time we live in.  

However, if someone dropped a baby on my doorstep to raise, that child would wear cloth diapers.