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Anniversaries, outhouses and bunny rabbits

GC and I are celebrating our first anniversary today! Even though life has thrown a crazy series of calamities our way lately, as GC puts it, “For a bad year, it’s been a pretty good year.”

And he’s right, it has. We’ve had a lot of good things happen to us too, especially falling in love. If I had to choose between changing everything that has happened over the past year and changing nothing, I’d cheerfully change nothing.

Speaking of good things, some kind friends lent us their cottage for the weekend, and we spent a lovely lazy weekend without any interruptions, including self-imposed ones. As much as we both love the internet, it was a refreshing change not having it at our fingertips.

We spent hours on Sunday sitting in a porch swing, me knitting a baby sweater and GC reading a book out loud. The birds sang and the breeze played in the trees, and we swung gently in the dappled sunlight, and life felt perfectly uncomplicated.

My legs only hurt when I walked, so I mostly just triangulated between the futon, the porch swing and the outhouse.

Speaking of outhouses, this was the nicest one I’ve ever been in. It smelled good, and it had a big window looking into the forest, so it wasn’t dark and creepy like most outhouses.

I’m a bit of an expert on outhouses, by the way. My expertise predates – by a long shot – my 2007 Bluesfest porta-potty series.

I was introduced to outhouses when I was about six years old and we were visiting somebody’s cottage. The hostess showed us our bedroom, and pulled a metal basin from under the bed.

“This,” she announced, ” is the chamberpot!”

I looked to my big sister for an explanation and she looked to Mom.

Our hostess, seeing our puzzled faces, explained.

“If you have to go to the bathroom after bedtime, you go in here.”

If I thought that was bizarre, it was nothing compared to the outhouse. She led us down a path to a wooden hut. It was so small I thought it must be a playhouse, until she opened the door and the most revolting odor came billowing out. The only thing in there was a toilet seat on a bench, millions of flies, and dozens of giant hairy spiders with thick muscular legs. It was beyond disgusting.

“During the day,” she said pleasantly, “you go to the bathroom in here.”

What?? She couldn’t be serious! I was appalled.

I put off using the outhouse as long as humanly possible but eventually I had no choice. (I don’t know why it never occurred to me to just go in the bushes, but it didn’t.) I ran down the path, held my breath, stepped inside, and made the fatal mistake of peering down the hole. It was worse than I had imagined. But I desperately had to pee. I latched the door shut, and the outhouse became pitch black, save for a sliver of light coming in from the crescent moon cutout high up on the door. The buzz of the flies was awful and I imagined snakes biting my bum while I peed. A spiderweb brushed against my arm and petrified me.

It was with enormous relief that I finally burst out of the outhouse, and gulped some uncontaminated air. (Remember, I had been holding my breath the whole time so I wouldn’t have to inhale the stench of the festering pit of poo.)

That evening at suppertime, I was picking at my meal in my usual picky-eater way when someone mentioned that the meat was delicious, what kind was it?

“Rabbit,” replied our hostess. My fork froze and I lifted my eyes to look at her. She had to be joking, right? People don’t eat rabbits. People don’t eat animals. I wondered if she was one of those grown-ups who think it’s funny to see how gullible kids are. But she hadn’t been kidding about the outhouse, and she didn’t look like she was kidding now.

I put my fork down.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked.

“I don’t eat animals,” I said.

“Sure you do,” she replied, “You eat hamburgers, don’t you?”

“Hamburgers aren’t animals,” I said.

Everybody laughed.

“Hamburgers are cows!” she said.

I didn’t believe it until my mother confirmed it.

“And you eat bacon, don’t you?” asked the woman.

I loved bacon.

“Pigs!” laughed the woman.

My mother nodded.

I had been eating pigs and cows all my life and nobody had told me? I lost my appetite. I felt sick.

By now I thoroughly disliked our hostess, seeing her as some kind of barbaric freak who peed in a pot under the bed, ate bunny rabbits, and had a filthy house full of rotting poo instead of a regular bathroom.

Speaking of poo, the next day I had to go, but couldn’t bear the thought of spending that long in the outhouse. I couldn’t hold my breath that long.

All day long I worried about the impending poo.

Late in the afternoon I whispered to my mom that I was sick and was going to bed.

I climbed into bed, waited a few minutes, then got up and pooped in the chamberpot. It felt weird and wrong, but it was so much better than the alternative. Then I slid the chamberpot under the bed and climbed back into bed. Of course it stunk, but nowhere near as bad as the million festering poos in the outhouse.

My mom came in to check on me a little later and it took her about three seconds to figure out what had happened and why. Nobody was very impressed with me for pooping in the chamberpot, but that was a small price to pay for the privilege of not pooping in the outhouse.

17 comments to Anniversaries, outhouses and bunny rabbits

  • Noam Deguerre

    happy anniversary – congratulations, and keep em’ coming! i came to hear your famous lost voids about life and find you making a different kind of scents – did you hear oscar wilde’s? “either this wallpaper goes, or i do!” just offal!

  • Happy anniversary! How nice to have the use of a happy little cottage for the weekend. I love the story; you’re so good at painting a moment in time in words.

  • I never met the hostess you described but every fiber of my inner 6 year-old resonates with the same rage towards her insensitivity.

    How could anyone eat Thumper?

  • Arden

    Oh man, I remember the terror of the outhouse. I haven’t been in one (or a porta-potty for that matter) in years and years. Luckily the family’s cottage has an indoor bathroom, oh how blissful!

  • grace

    Every time I feel sorry for myself I remember that we didn’t have indoor plumbing until my parents had 6.5 children. I was the firstborn and so suffered the indignities the longest but poor Mom! BTW an outhouse does not have to smell that bad . . . it was the cold winter days that were the worst and at our one-room school the trip was even further.

    Yes folks, I’m antediluvial.

    g

  • Tobique Demo

    If God didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat (heard that at work last week). Happy anniversary!

  • Deb

    I am wiping tears from my eyes as I read this. Who was our hostess? I don’t remember. My Rob doesn’t understand why I don’t “do” outhouses…you have reminded me why.

    Happy Anniversary to you both. GC, thank you for making my sister so happy and Zoom, I love how you make GC glow.

  • Oma

    Deb … The only woman there was me! We had no hostess. That’s why you don’t remember one. It was up at Uncle Terry’s lot with just a bare bones shack of a cottage and an outhouse.

    Terry and Skipper went hunting and we all thought we were eating duck till I said the duck must have walked rather than flown all the way to Canada because the leg I was eating was so tough. That’s when they told us all that it was a bunny and the subsequent conversation about meat sources ensued.

    And Zoom: you forgot to mention that you had to clean your chamber pot yourself! You got all the main things right just a few stray ends that got knotted in the forty some years of trying to forget it all!

    Happy Anniversary to you and GC! I know it makes you nervous but I am going to say it anyway. You have found yourself a real keeper in GC and I am delighted that you are so happy together.

  • Good god, that’s a funny comment from your Oma.

    Happy anniversary!!!!

  • Gillian

    Keep on writing. It’s great reading you. & Happy Anniversary!

  • Tom Sawyer

    Well, happy, happy, happy anniversary. You and GC are the greatest. Now, just don’t let XUP read about the smelly outhouse; we’ll never hear the end of it.

  • This post is absolutely going to give me nightmares. I am NOT an outdoor person or a cottage person. One of my earliest experiences at a cottage involved an outhouse and ACK, I thought for sure I would die.

    And I was like, 25 years old.

    So glad to hear you had a much happier weekend and a nice relaxing cottage experience!

  • OMG I laughed until i cried!

    How useful that you took all this ill will and created a “hostess” to heap it on, instead of mom!!!!

  • Bonnie

    Happy Anniversary! We had an outhouse until I was about 4 yrs old but my Mom and Dad grew up with outhouses and not only that but they used the Eatons catalogue for toiletpaper. The pages were like newsprint not the glossy pages in catalogues these days. Still…eeewwwww….

  • Gwen

    LMAO! Great story Sooze!

  • Happy happy anniversary to you and GC, Zoom! You seem like you were made for each other. DH and I just celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary but really it’s 40.5 years together. (If only we hadn’t been babies when we met!) You are so lucky to know it when you found it. Many happy returns. And all the best to you both.

  • This is very very funny. Found your blog a long time ago – can’t remember how. Happy anniversary!