Toilets

In my search for a new place to live, uppermost in my mind is the toilet. One of the things I will have to do is to hack the toilets and change to new ones. I always feel queasy when I have to sit on some body's toilet bowl.

Fortunately, I grew up using the squat toilet with modern flush system. During those days, most toilets utilised the rubber bucket system. To me that was always a nightmare. I was petrified of the darn thing. Not only was it smelly and dirty, I was always afraid of either falling into the hole or dropping something into it.

To my young readers who are not familiar with it, the system consisted of a raised cubicle shit-house, where you climb up several steps to go inside it. Inside, there is a concrete slab with two bricks and a hole in between. You place your feet on the bricks and squat down to shit. Your knickers and pants are stretched across your knees. Your nose comes very close to your knickers and you have the full aroma of vintage pee! For ladies, not that I have seen it, you pull your skirt/dress/cheongsum up to your waist, leaving your dainty panty across your knees. Now you know why I have this phobia of dropping something out of the pocket. At the very bottom is the bucket made of very heavy rubber. Everyday, the night-soil collector will come round to pull the bucket out and replace with an empty bucket. At the back of the house, you can see a square hole with a piece of rubber flap. This was where the bucket is exchanged.

When the sitting toilet was introduced, my brother used to trick me into believing that when you flush sitting down, the water will also wash your backside. Trying that out one day, I discovered the water did not reach me at all.

I had a friend whose shit house was built outside the house. One day, he was squatting inside. I picked up a bamboo pole with a hook at the end, and started to probe from the opening until he started yelling. I had a good laugh at his expense.

I was so petrified of this toilet that I refused to use it. When I was a little boy, one day, my father took me to Penang and stayed at a friend's Peranakan house at Mentri Lane. There were two other little boys there with their mother and grandmother. The toilet was the bucket system. My father had gone out in the morning leaving me alone with the two boys. As luck would have it, I needed to shit. Bravely, I held on until it became excruciating. I started to walk round in circle trying very hard to control until it was impossible. The darn thing came out in my shorts. Suddenly one lump fell out on the floor. I panicked and ran to hide under the staircase not knowing what to do.

A moment later, the grandmother happened to walk by and noticed the lump. She called out wondering what it was. The other two boys ran up to join her out of curiosity. They squatted down to examine the lump. I was watching all this from my hiding place. The grandmother touched the lump and smelled it. She cried out in horror that it was a lump of shit. She never got to find out who did it, and was puzzled how that lump of shit got there in the first place. That evening when my father got back, I told him I soiled my shorts. He took me to the bathroom to hose me down and washed my shorts.

Not too long ago, I was flying from Labuan to Kuching in a Dart Herald. After passing Brunei, I suddenly felt my stomach cramp. I thought of going to the toilet just behind me. But decided that since it was not severe, I would do it on the ground at Kuching. Shortly after that, Operations called me on the radio informing me that I had to divert into Sibu, to pick up two coffins. As I made a left hand turn towards Sibu, the cramp returned. It was too late for me to go to the toilet as I started my approach into Sibu. Needless to say, I was most uncomfortable trying to concentrate on my landing and controlling my bowel. As soon as I shut down the engines, I told my colleague that I had to go to the loo very urgently.

I found the toilet just by the tarmac and it was newly installed. It was a squat toilet with the modern flush system. I was wearing my one piece green flying suit. When I unzipped, I found my top joining shirt trailing behind me. Trying to remove my suit, my shoes got in the way. By this time, the urgency was so great that I started to break out in a sweat and shivering with the cramps. Unlacing my shoes one by one, I finally kicked them off and took my suit off. Squatting down, the darn thing came out like a bomb! Phew! Just made it. Accustomed to the sitting toilet, it was quite an effort trying to squat. My legs began to shiver and by the time I had finished, I felt like I had been in a sauna. Luckily for me, the toilet was very new and clean, and was quite spacious allowing me to throw my suit on the floor and squat wearing my socks.

When I was in the jungle, I had to dig a hole and cover it up after I had finished. The officers had their own toilet, which was a large bucket filled with Jeyes fluid. The fluid smelled so bad that it made me puke; smells worse than the shit. One evening after dinner, I had wanted to shit and walked towards the jungle looking for a quiet spot. The sentry saw me and decided to keep watch over me. I doubled back and had to use the officers toilet.

My youngest daughter K and my grand daughter seem to have inherited this trait from me. Before they enter a toilet, they must check it out for cleanliness before use. Otherwise, they would rather constipate until they reached home or the hotel.

Enough shit jokes for now. Will keep some for future use.

Till then....