Maybe it's time for less modesty
Last night I finished reading Packing for Mars, a book which really highlights now little people working for NASA understand about being human. No wonder we face such absurd struggles in the healthcare system when NASA seems to have a hard time understanding that if you feed humans cubed hunks of food product covered in lard morale will plummet. Fancy that -- humans are not just soft machines!
One scatological gem stood out to me: “One of the things I love about manned space exploration is that it forces people to unlace certain notions of what is and isn’t acceptable...Does crapping into a Baggie while sitting 6 inches away from your crewmate represent a collapse of human dignity or a unique and comic form of intimacy? The latter, by [astronaut] Jim Lovell’s reckoning."
If you're an astronaut, you're expected to shit into a bag in a crowded room, which is a little more...involved...without gravity. And when the fat to fiber ratio is unfortunate. Then you squirt antibacterial gel into the bag, seal it, and work the gel through the poo. Or, if you're busy, a crewmate will do this for you.
And that's the optimal situation. I won't even get into the ways things go wrong.
Okay, I know this isn't the email you wanted to get, but a lot of people hit a breaking point when their spouse or parent is too embarrassed to admit they need help doing a #2 and their attempt to improvise goes horribly wrong. When we still had a toll-free number, people kept ringing me up in tears surrounded by a poosplosion and I'd have to talk them down. I'm not going to calculate what percentage of posts in our groups are about toileting, but let's just say it's not low.
In Care Work, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha talks about community care webs where helping a friend with a bowel movement is part of hanging out. It's not a big deal.
This secrecy about pooing is a pretty new thing. In At Home, Bill Bryson shares how “The Romans were particularly attached to the combining of evacuation and conversation. Their public latrines generally had twenty seats or more in intimate proximity, and people used them as unselfconsciously as modern people ride a bus...Being comfortable with strangers lasted far into modern times. Hampton Court contained a ‘Great House of Ease’ that could accommodate fourteen users at once. Charles II always took two attendants with him when he went to the lavatory. Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, has a lovingly preserved privy with two seats side by side.”
When everyone poops, when so many of us require assistance with pooping, when so many people suffer from IBS and other ailments with similar symptoms, when colon cancer kills more people than breast cancer...why is pooping so shameful? Why is this the thing we decide is essential to dignity?
I say, if astronauts can get down with wearing adult diapers and getting a little help from their friends, we all can.
Now, if only some of the adult diaper innovations from NASA could filter their way into the mainstream market. We got Tang and Carnation Instant Breakfast, but an adult diaper that actually works overnight would be a heck of a lot more useful.
PS. My stock joke for when I embarrass myself (which is often) used to be 'every bit of dignity I lose brings me that much closer to freedom. One day I'll shit myself in public and finally be free.' Which usually got a laugh, but always resulted in everyone within hearing distance telling me a story about shitting themselves in public. Seriously, apparently everyone has done it and will happily tell you about it if you ask in a way that feels like you're not going to mock them.
PPS. Unrelated to everything else, check out this adorable portrait of NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin with his dogs, Jake and Scout.