A Blast From the Past!!

Many of you probably don't know this about me, well maybe you do if you read this blog entry, but I have a degree in Journalism. In order to get said degree, I had to do a three-month-long internship (it felt like 3 mother f-ing years). Which just so happened to be for my hometown newspaper. This required me to leave my super cool and funky college town and return to my mom's house (My mom is super cool and funky too, but you get the gist.) Not a happy camper.

Thee only cool thing about writing for a newspaper was that the Outdoor Editor let me write 2 guest columns.

Here, for a repeat performance, is one of those columns.

I admit it.

I am deathly afraid of outhouses.

Laugh all you want. (Everyone always does.) Admitting this fear is embarrassing enough.

It is not the smell that bothers me, or the flies that buzz around. It is not the occasional spider web or the fear of falling in. It is not the idea of going where other’s have “gone before,” or even the dark trek out to the loo in the middle of the night.

I am not afraid of the splashing thing or the sitting on the seat. I am not afraid I’ll drop something important, never able to retrieve it.

Nope, it’s the little, dirty old man that lives “down there” in the pit and tickles the behinds of unsuspecting users.

OMFG!! This is him! This is him!

I’m not crazy, I am aware there is really not an unhygienic person who lives in the hole, yet he has haunted me ever since I can remember.

No matter what my mother tells everyone, my borderline “outhouse phobia” is ALL her fault. I must have been fine with the whole outdoor bathroom thing before the “incident” ruined me, because being afraid of an outhouse is obviously a learned behavior.

It happened one summer evening when my family and I were camping. I was at that tender age when I took my mother’s word as the gospel truth. As I was walking to the john, my mother casually told me to be careful about the little old man.

Well that was it. That was when it all began. And it has stuck with me throughout all my outdoor adventures.

While attending a three-day concert at the Gorge in Washington State during college, I knew I would be forced to use the portable potty. So when Mother Nature called, I made my best friend go in with me. Here we are, cramped inside a sea green outhouse, with a thousand people waiting to go and I cannot sit and do my business without fear of the little old man and his long scratchy index finger. My best friend is laughing at me. It’s over a hundred degrees in that thing. People are yelling at us to hurry and I am petrified. Needless to say, it was a long couple of days.

Another time, I was camping with a boyfriend at this little rustic place on Rock Creek in Montana. After a fabulous day of fishing, I had to go. Making him stand guard for the hundredth time while I did the deed, he became fed up and pleaded with me to use the outhouse behind the cabin.

After much protest and mostly to just make him shut up about it, I gave in. I thought that day would be the day my life with outhouses would change forever.

Yeah right. I walked into the old wooden outhouse and again, I was terrified.

If the fate of the free world rested on my and an outhouse, I would use it to the best of my abilities.

I love the outdoors and I love being close to nature, so I will continue to do my natural thing as close to her as possible.

This was printed with a PICTURE of me and THOUSANDS of people read it. The day this got printed was a Thursday and over the course of the next coupla days I got: a free lunch because the waitress recognized me from the picture and said her husband laughed so hard he was crying and she knew he would want to pay for my bowl of Chili; I got a wedding proposal - not for marriage but some guy at the bar recognized me and wanted to take me as his date to his brother's wedding. Really? I also got emails and phone calls and a shout out from some DJ at a Rodeo Dance. Really?

I was known for the rest of the summer as "The Outhouse Girl" but I wasn't embarrassed because this "Outhouse Girl" didn't pay SHIT for her drinks all summer long!