A No Pants Kinda Day, Outhouse Mishap

Have you ever wanted to go into the office and just go the whole day not wearing any pants?

For those of you who work at home, this does not apply, you can do this any time.

Those of us who are rebels at heart but have to conform to maintain income, pay bills, keep a roof over our heads, put gas in the car, bla, bla, bla ..... we must head into the office. Whether that office is a bus barn where we park our car then climb into a yellow school bus for the morning or a government office building, we must leave our homes and travel to our jobs.

Now you may be asking yourselves, what in the world does this have to do with outhouses?? I will get there eventually.

I was a pretty lucky kid. We only had an outhouse at the lake cabin and didn't have to live there, so we didn't have to use it every single day or night every single day of the year.

Some of my friends were not that lucky. They had no choice and this was very simply, the life they lived, the life they knew, the life they accepted and respected.

When I would spend the night with a friend who had no indoor plumbing, I apprecitated the fact that someone in their family was thoughtful enough to put an actual toliet set above the hole cut out for the waste to fall, even if 20 degrees outside and wrapped in a quilt, that seat was a welcome sight. As a girl, I could manage to sit on the seat still wrapped in the quilt to warm it some until I was about to burst then I would yank the quilt, do my business and run back to the house.

For those of you who are not familiar, an outhouse has to be moved frequently, has to be as far away from the water well as possible and although it certainly would be easier to get to if it was right next to the house, would you really want human waste that close to where you spent most of your time? Also, an outhouse has no electricity, at least the ones I used had no electricity. Flashlights hung by the back door to help lead the way to the outhouse and at least in the winter, there wasn't the need to search every corner, high and low, for snakes, spiders, or some other critter that might decide to make a home for the night in the shelter, especially if it was about to rain.

No matter the time of year, girls, I don't know about the men, but girls had to be careful to keep their pants off the floor of the outhouse. This required some skill if wrapped in a thick quilt because you wouldn't want the quilt to hit the floor either. If there were men about, they didn't worry much about making it to the outhouse, the world became their outhouse, unless they had serious business to do, at which point, they were not too neat. You get the picture.

At work on the day I am speaking of, decades after my last use of an outhouse, I had become accustom to "dropping trowe", just letting my pants hit the floor without worry. That day, I needed to worry. There was a leak in a joint behind the toilet and my pants were accommodating enough to soak up all the water I didn't see at the base of the toilet.

So, there I sat, for most of the day, behind my desk in my office with my pants off. I had a jacket around my waist and my pants drapped over a drawer with a DO NOT DISTURB note tapped to my door. Of course everyone had to knock and ask, why is there a DND on your door? Lucky for me, and them, I have a desk with a privacy front!

I tied it together, the outhouse and my no pants kinda day. It was a new experience for me and my pants eventually dried but oh my goodness. I do check the floor of the bathroom now, every single trip, just like the outhouses from my youth.