Chuckle #474 | November 16th, 2011
Americans Don't Know Diddly about Squat
Once upon a time, when the really big decisions about our new country were being made, America parted ways from the rest of the world. The Founding Fathers decided, in the spirit of self-determination, that the Squat Toilet was not for them. In America there would be only new-fangled sit on top toilets. This approach was deemed more couth, less “native”, and overall more hygienic.
How could we have been so wrong?
As a result of this unfortunate cultural choice, American girls are not exposed to the squat toilet. Such a travesty! What do these girls do when they travel to Asia, Saudi Arabia, or tiny farm villages in Greece and Italy?
I’ll tell you what the young American abroad does. She pees all over herself.
I’m a big believer in the benefits of squatting, and not just because I gave birth to my second child in Japan. (I have the “squatting pail” to prove it.) In a utopian “world without borders” there are certain skills that young ladies should master before leaving home, and the ability to pee anywhere is definitely one of them. Needlepoint is not.
Squatters enjoy more shapely thighs, have better sex, and are able to hold yoga poses longer. They are less likely to develop hemorrhoids, and EVERYONE (outside of America) knows that there is no better preparation for giving birth than regular, sustained squatting.
Don’t scoff. This skill (and possible Olympic sport in 2016) is not just for jet setters. There are FILTHY restrooms all around us, and if you don’t teach your daughter to touch nothing with her nether parts, then you aren’t much of a parent, are you? I don’t care if you are filthy rich, even the very privileged might someday need to use the restroom during the ferry ride to Nantucket.
When visiting public restrooms we already teach our kids to open doors with their shirtsleeves, flush with their foot, and to turn off the faucet with their elbows. None of this matters if they then plop their bare bottoms down on the same toilet enjoyed by a bevy of Bangladeshis fresh off a flight from Dhaka.
And I’m not just gratuitously insulting Bangladesh like they do in certain movies. I have facts. The 2010 Mercer Health and Sanitation Index ranked Dhaka as the dirtiest city in the world. Your personal-size bottle of hand sanitizer is not going to cut it there.
Given that little factoid, I don’t think it is so terrible to yell “Squat or Die” at my girls from the next stall over while we are traveling internationally, or even passing through Grand Central Station. They can roll their eyes all they want, as long as they do it from a squatting position.
I’ve tried to teach my children that every surface of a public restroom is teeming with infectious disease causing germs like bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa, and that the stall itself is the biggest petri dish of all. They just seem to think I’m nuts.
The day will come when I no longer have the strength to maintain a proper squat. That will be the day that I must say goodbye to public bathrooms and hello to Depends. I’m hoping that by then Kimberly Clark will be manufacturing Depends in cool colors, and will offer a choice of bikini or thong cut by virtue of a super thin, ultra-absorbent space age material, yet to be developed. As of right now, they don’t look so cool.
Aging Boomers like me will be expecting a lot more style from our personal urination containment systems. And not calling them “adult diapers” would be a good place to start.
