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To my way of thinking Sir Thomas Crapper’s invention of the flushing toilet is head over heels better than what Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla came up with.

Growing up, we had an indoor toilet.  But, we had relatives who had outhouses. and, I would gladly have swapped my baby brother for an outhouse.

Aunt Mamie and Uncle Arlie were rich. They had a two-seater outhouse, that was for “emergencies and really good friends.”

Most of my friends were boys except for Betty Kay. She was a tattletale. I didn’t want to sit in the outhouse with a tattletale.

Aunt Mamie’s outhouse, a two-seater seat, had a bottle opener on one end so Uncle Arlie could open his co-cola while he was occupied.

I wanted to be occupied so I could have an outhouse co-cola but I never was.

Back then, young’uns played games with made-up names like jackrabbit split the log. At Aunt Mamie’s one of our favorite games to play was stick your head in the outhouse hole.

What you had to do was stick you head way down in the seat hole and hold it there. Whoever pulled their head out first was the loser.

Really, it was a game to see who could hold their breath the longest. But sticking your head in the hole in the outhouse made the game a lot more fun.

Outhouses were always at the end of a long path. Having to go to the outhouse in the dark of night was what Aunt Mamie called an emergency.

One night, I had an emergency. I woke Betty Kay to go with me. It was as dark as pitch but we made our way to the outhouse. She was scared to go in the outhouse with me but she was more afraid of staying outside by herself.

We had just gotten comfortable – if an outhouse has been well-constructed, the seat can be comfortable. When we heard something trying to get in, Betty Kay whispered, “a fox.”

But it was a big, wooly monster coming in the outhouse. We screamed and jumped up on the two-seater.  Betty Kay’s foot and leg went down in the hole. She fell flat on the two-seater.  I ran out and left her.

I was fast asleep before Uncle Arlie got Betty Kay out of the hole and in the bed. She’d had a real emergency.