Points of Ordure: Excreta

Skip the B.S.

By Skip Eisiminger

“It has reached the point where one cannot follow a septic tank ‘stool bus’ without finding an execrable pun. One poker-challenged, toilet-wise trucker boasted that ‘a flush beats a full house.’ In a similar vein, print ads for Honey Bucket porta-potties include ‘Johnny on the Spot,’ and, ‘Party Pooper.’ Finally, there’s Toyland where Betsy Wetsy, Magic Potty Baby, and a dog that leaks yellow puddles reside.”Skip Eisiminger

“No one is exempt and everyone’s pain has a different smell.”—Craig Raine

“The following program is rated ‘P,’ for Poop.”—Jack Ziegler

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/24/2012—In 1902 in his first essay for the Apostles, a secret society at Cambridge University, Lytton Strachey strained under the burden of “forthing.” Indeed, defecation is challenging under the best of circumstances, but it is especially so when the self-censoring writer calls it “forthing.” At any rate, “that mystic unburdening of our bodies,” Strachey argues, has “an extraordinary charm” because “it is one of the few last relics of our animalistic ancestry—a strange reminiscence of the earth from which we have sprung.”

I imagine Strachey had read something from the vast literature of the noble savage where in many cultures like the Balinese, bodily functions are so natural that the family dog is used to clean a baby’s buttocks as well as the mother’s hands. In the European Middle Ages, hell was a place where the inmates were forced into open coprophagy. Though Henry VIII paid his Groom of the Stool top wages, the folk who walked on stilts through some of the worst parts of London to avoid stepping in human waste were not impressed. In France, Louis XIV was nicknamed “the Moon King” when word escaped Versailles that he let himself be purged while holding court. When indoor toilets were offered to home buyers in the nineteenth century, many thought the idea was as repulsive as blowing one’s nose and putting the folded results in a pocket or purse. And the early twentieth-century reformer Dr. Horace Fletcher addressed the issue indirectly when he recommended that people chew each mouthful thirty-two times. The result, Fletcher claimed, would be “digestion ash” that had “no more odor than a hot biscuit.”

Of course, the tavern denizens who dodged piles of human waste on the way home and those who mucked out the dairy barns had always expressed themselves with a certain crude zest: “When Shit-for-brains met Hell-on-wheels, it soon became apparent that neither one knew shit, but when the King cried, ‘Shit!’ they strained in unison.” Though no one ever spoke that indecorous sentence, the phrases contained therein have been commonplace for centuries. In many English words like “manure,” where the original sense was to “work [animal waste into the soil] with the hands,” the unpolished connections have been lost to us. In German, there are several words that hide their lowly ancestry like “pumpernickel,” which literally means bread that makes the diner “pass wind like the devil.”

In places like the South Pacific nation of Nauru, where the chief export was once dried bird droppings, I imagine there are few taboos with regard to the “gold mine” they were blessed with until it was tapped out about 1990. However, in a country like ours whose most influential citizens for 150 years were English Puritans, the curbs are numerous but falling fast. A check of Amazon.com will yield a list of books, many for children, which would never have passed muster forty years ago. These titles include All Animals Poop; Drek! The Real Yiddish Your Bubbe Never Taught You; How to Shit in the Woods, and What’s Your Poo Telling You? In 1993, the Discovery Channel ran “The Wonderful World of Dung” with a single sponsor, but when they reprised it, there was no shortage of patrons.

For several years, I’ve been a regular reader of two newspapers and a half-dozen magazines, and I can tell you that journalistic standards have changed. Recent stories from Fleet Street have dealt with turkey rectums being glued shut, tins of an artist’s excrement pegged to the price of gold, staging interventions for anal retentives, Amish cow-manure “Stool Toads,” a romance-writer’s advice on purging the bowels twice a day, a Japanese bidet that blow dries and perfumes, and Tina Fey’s revelation that busy male colleagues at “Saturday Night Live” urinate in their coffee cups and leave them sitting about the office.

Ever since Freud theorized in 1917 that flushing a child’s excremental gift is a cause of later neuroses, medical science has been treating number two as number one. The nineteenth-century’s advice of “never look back” has been replaced by Dr. Mehmet Oz telling millions on national television that feces should “hit the water like a diver from Acapulco.” Who knew?

It has reached the point where one cannot follow a septic tank “stool bus” without finding an execrable pun. One poker-challenged, toilet-wise trucker boasted that “a flush beats a full house.” In a similar vein, print ads for Honey Bucket Porta-Potties include “Johnny on the Spot,” and, “Party Pooper.” Finally, there’s Toyland, where Betsy Wetsy, Magic Potty Baby, and a dog that leaks yellow puddles reside.

I find it charming that when our two-year-old granddaughter needs to move her bowels, she waddles toward a dim corner in the dining room. Twenty years ago, I wanted to tear down all the barriers to free speech including dingbatted maledicta, but when that happens, I’m afraid the world smells like South Park’s talking pile of stool. Don’t misunderstand: I love Cliff R. Livingstone’s observation, “When the chips are down, the buffalo is empty“. I’m just looking for some decorum before the deluge. As two-year-olds instinctively understand, some things are best done privately.

Please do not forward, and wash your hands after reading.

The first illustration for this column was taken via Flickr, from “Adam Kuban’s Photostream,” at http://www.flickr.com/photos/slice/with/3792707833/#photo_3792707833; the second image, also from Flickr, was created by “open strings,” and may be accessed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/numsom/3939162652/.