Every so often, the posts in this blog elicit some grumbling over what does and does not constitute appropriate reading material for Catholics. From one camp, the argument goes, "Life is short! Far to short for fol-de-rol. Our eternal souls are at stake, so it's not just a matter of taste -- it's an actual sin to waste time talking about things that are not clearly and specifically labelled 'Catholic' and designed expressly to improve our spiritual state."
The other argument goes, "Yeah, but if you're going to be Catholic all the time, that means going about your business as a Catholic. You just assume that everything you say is from a Catholic point of view, and you don't have to go to the trouble of labeling it "Catholic," any more than a professional runner has to secure sponsorship from Nike every time he trots across the street to mail a letter. After all, that's the wonderful thing about being a Catholic: you don't have to fragment yourself. You don't have to have church-you and regular-you. You're not half body and half soul; you're a bodysoul, whose nature is to live in this world while preparing to move to the next."
In short, there is nothing especially holy about being constipated, in body or in soul.
And that, my friends, is the only excuse you're going to get for the following.
I can't live a day longer without one of these wastebaskets in my bathroom:
Now, I'm sure that some of y'all are too refined to admit that you read on the toilet, but why? It's the quietest place in the house, at least until the dear ones figure out you're in there. Sure, the ambiance leaves something to be desired, but by gum, a place to sit down is a place to sit down.
Anyway, one of my happiest childhood memories was of the bathroom journal we used to keep. It was called, naturally, "The Toilet Paper." (This was before the days of the internet, or else there would certainly have been some terrible puns about what you downloaded today.)
"The Toilet Paper," as I recall it, was a series of competitions, such as, "How many rhyming two-word phrases can you name, in which the first word begins with an H?" There are lots! Hoity toity! Hoi Polloi! Harum scarum. Higgldy piggledy. Hotsy totsy. Humdrum. Hoopy frood. Okay, that doesn't rhyme, but a really amazingly together guy would not let that slow him down. In its heyday (Heyday! There's another one. Boy, good game, huh?) The Toilet Paper even had a masthead, featuring an anthropomorphized roll of toilet paper striking a heroic pose, with a few unfurled squares streaming out behind him like a cape. And even when people weren't getting along, we had this common bond, this living historical record of the kind of ideas that go through your head when your guard is down.
Anyway, "The Toilet Paper" temporarily solved a perennial problem: what to put in the bathroom to read? You have to have something, and even the most compulsive reader will eventually tire of the terse elegance of "Talcum powder. Ingredients: Talc." Short, episodic reads are best, but if you put something good, then people will just take it with them. So How To Get From January To December by Will Cuppy, while hilarious and perfectly suited for quick reads, never stayed put for long. Ditto for anything by Bob and Ray.
Also, if you put something too nice, it would end up . . . you know, damp.
So my mother solved this dilemma by keeping the bathroom stocked with the most tedious, unreadable stuff available, which was always in good supply in our house, because my father was unable to turn down a book of any kind. I remember when he arranged for a huge dumpster full of books to be deposited in the driveway. Why were they such a steal? Oh, some little matter of devastating fire and water damage. But they were so cheap!
Thus, what was available was Grotesquely Dull Science Fiction, 1952-1954, a pamphlet describing the watershed system in Connecticut, and something by St. Bonaventure with the last few pages missing (whodunit? We'll never know). Unless you wanted to read the back of the talcum powder can again, that was pretty much it -- no reason to linger. Really kept the line going.
But I think I've come up with an even better solution. I came across an old library sale copy of Words Into Type, which, according to the conveniently dustjacketed flyleaf, is "a classic among style manuals, an invaluable reference source for many of the fine points of grammar, usage, style, and production methods."
So if you open up to page 228, you will learn that
Adjectives ending in -like are usually one word except when the root ends in two l's or is a proper noun or an adjective.
Do not combine adjectives with -like as in globularlike; use either globular or globulelike.
Add -like to an open compound (for example, bone spicule) as follows: bone-spiculelike.
And it goes on like that. Isn't that magnificent? There are 581 pages of sage, grave, irrefutable advice put together by a largely nameless collection of "other authorities" whose hearts belong to grammar. I just love it. It's like seeing an old man who takes the time to put on a three-piece suit in time for the mailman every morning. It's eminently entertaining, for bathroom visit-like increments, because it has words in it -- interesting, interesting words; and yet . . . nobody's going to steal this book. I feel sure of it. I feel froodlike.
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OK. “Frood” is not listed on dictionary.com. WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Or maybe the better question is, What did you mean by froodlike? I must know. How about bringing the computer in the bathroom and reading Simcha?
As a former librarian I am familiar with the types of literature described here. Patrons in my day would request this stuff.
Isn’t it “hoopty frood”?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hoopty+frood
Soooooo embarrassed that I read this on my Kindle Fire in the bathroom…
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/368pkp/
Simcha, you are the hoopiest frood I know!
Oh and it can’t possibly be a coincidence that my word verification contains the number 42: “both42”.
Dear O dear, Please be careful. Don’t you know that electronic devices have an affinity for toilet water. Your Kindle Fire has the ability to jump right out of your hand and into the toilet even if you are sitting on it and you are quite fat. I can’t explain how. It’s a mystery. If you don’t believe me, well, you will find out to your sorrow. $199.00 is a lot of money to flush down the toilet. ;-)
AMDG
Whenever I take something into the bathroom with me, I can’t help thinking of the episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” where Larry gets repeatedly freaked out by people contaminating things by taking them into the bathroom with them. (“The Smoking Jacket, from season 5…the only season I ever wound up seeing much of.)
Oh, Simcha, you’re so sassy! (I was on my phone at the time, which is why I couldn’t Google that.)
Our “bathroom” used to be outside near the orchard.No reading materials, no internet reception.Just peace & tranquility, except when you’d discover the mice had shredded up the last of the toilet paper for their nests.
@Alexis - sorry, I just love lmgtfy so much.
My life is lined with books. I can’t say that they ever made it to the bathroom however. We generally didn’t admit to such bodily functions, unless it was a harrowing emergency. My sister and I have the shared experience of believing the word f-rt was the “F” word for years. My husband dispensed with this coldblooded nonsense chip chop. We have a tenuous truce and an unspoken treaty. It gives my children great delight to violate them, for the sheer joy of it.
We had decade-old military history magazines (several titles) and National Geographics in the bathroom. Even when Dad was still subscribing to them, the ones in the bathroom were always a decade old.
My grandparents usually had a few RDs, but not in the powder room that company could use.
I should get that trash pail for my dad. Not only would it get a lot of laughs at Christmas, but he would probably use it.
Simcha, I love “lmgtfy” to no end. My husband used that on me a few times when I’d ask him something he didn’t know either. Your whole post made me chuckle. I’ve always thought the ingredients lists for shampoo and conditioner were a great lesson in “sounding it out”.
This does confirm a suspicion I have Simcha. Some of us simply can’t function or be happy without the written word, unto even the furthest recesses of the house. Either that, or some of us just need more bran in our diet. I do become a nervous-neat-freak if I don’t have something written to escape into, to offset the boredom of housework. One could even say that the grout joints in my floors and counter tops have suffered due to Simcha Fisher and a few others, but hey, better dingy grout then the need for a shrink, eh? Your love for grammar really takes it to the next level though. I’ll happily peruse Spanish or Italian verbs, but a love for the intricacies of English grammar is particularly hardcore. I can appreciate it to a point. It’s kind of like physics. it’s all well and good when they’re talking about black holes and God particles, but when they start to back it up with math formulas, my self diagnosed ADD starts raging. Have you ever read some of the blog threads of those that are really into physics? Their language is MATH. I’m mystified when they speak in formulas. *Numbers* give them solace, like *words* comfort us. Can you imagine what they write on *their* toilet paper? It makes me shudder.
I thought the Reader’s Digest was the sine qua non bathroom reading all over America! I spent many happy hours in the bathroom reading Life in these United States and Drama in Real Life. Ah, memories!
My mom always taped maps to the wall by the toilet. She have a few other books in there too (or we’d bring our own…) like something in Spanish so we could learn that. Now she keeps daily devotional books in there. I don’t know what that says about my family of origin.
I like the “Toilet Paper” idea, but none of my kids are old enough to read and write yet. I don’t have any books in there since my 3 y-o likes to do things like wash his feet in the sink and everything gets wet. In a year or two, though…
Also, I have to say that we had a poetry day with our (Leisure, the Basis of) Culture Club and my dh read Vogon poetry for it.
Only you could find a book like that. Good for you.
I have always forbade any reading material or toys in the bathroom because I want people in and out. But Anna above just gave me the idea that it wouldn’t hurt to have one thing on the wall like a map. Since I homeschool it is always a good idea to kill two birds with stone.
That trash can is so clever - this whole discussion is so simple and fun. I love it!
I have to share something; after I returned to work from maternity leave I needed to take periodic breaks to get breastmilk for my baby. My office’s private restroom is the most private place, and I saved a couple of lengthy reading projects for those times in my life, reading a little each day. I sat in a chair, but it’s still not the most refined spot to enrich your soul.
Thanks Simcha!
you sass that hoopy ford prefect? now there’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.
I use to call it the “reading room” however it has been renamed the “ask dad a question room”. It never fails, I can be available for hours, no questions, then I’m in and sure enough here come the questions.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac! It’s the best lav lit around! And it comes with a hole to put a little popchain through and you can hang it on the side of a cabinet or inside a door!
Love that trash can!
We who edit as our business actually use Words into Type! A good editor will have the current (5th) edition.
One of the bathrooms in our house has a handicap rail next to the toilet. We could so get a chain and hang the Old Farmer’s Almanac in there!
Sheesh, everyone knows the most appropriate reading material for the bathroom is a collection of favorite comics - like Zits, Calvin and Hobbes, or Dilbert. You can flip the book open to any page and read a bit, without developing that embarrassing toilet seat ring.
Our bathrooms have typically been b-y-o-book, although my daughters picked up copies of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader at a used book sale, and pretty much memorized the thing. My husband’s family hung a framed poster on the bathroom wall that had hundreds of quotes/aphorisms printed on it. When we cleaned out the house, that’s the one thing my older daughter requested to have, to remind her of her grandparents’ home.
re: the bathroom wall map:
We have a shower curtain that is a map of the world. I have learned a thing or two, I tell you.
Over the years, I’ve bought many editions of comic strip collections like Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert, Garfield and The Far Side. Because these are in a home full of children, there are multiple copies of the same book, all having at least two or three pages missing somewhere in them, but I buy them cheap at at the charity shop, Goodwill so it isn’t like I’m crying about it. These are the primary reading materials in our bathroom.
No one except new visitors to the house thinks twice about sudden eruption of children’s giggles coming from behind the bathroom door unless it is accompanied by the sounds of running water splashing on the linoleum or the strong fragrance of V05 shampoo or toothpaste. THEN I know there’s trouble.
Two of our grandsons - both in the same subfamily - take enough time in the reading room. One of them actually takes his laptop in there, and I don’t think he’s doing his homework.
Given that tendency, adding a magazine rack on the wall seems counter-intuitive.
BTW, what is a “hoopy frood”? A happy fraud with vowel changes? (example: “eight apples and bananas, eight eeples and beneenees, eight iples and bininies, eight oples and bononoes, eight ooples and bununues”.
Enjoy your columns always. TeaPot562
Best bathroom book I ever had was one about myths, unsolved mysteries, and paranormal experiences. And someone gave us a subscription to Newsweek, so I keep it in the bathroom both to read and just in case we run out of toilet paper.
The NCRegister has always had a special place in our bathroom so keep those headlines snappy and the articles that appeal especially to men are very helpful.It keeps our family informed and encouraged.:)
We find that logic puzzels help to work things out. Right now we are on a Sudoko and Perplexor kick.
Is it SACRILEGIOUS to read holy books in the bathroom? I often am reading religious books more than any other and sometimes need to go to the bathroom while immersed in a great life of a saint or somesuch. I feel sort of funny to take the book in with me but sometimes I do just that.
Simcha, you really know where your towel is!
Can we go back to following some words with “like”. Here in the south people say: “She went real “quick-like” to the ...(of course, in this case it would be the bathroom to get the latest issue of “the Toilet Paper)
And, by the way, where do we get the reading podiums which double as trash cans?
I am sure there is something wrong with me, but I can’t believe that this is a public discussion in a Catholic forum by an adult Catholic woman in concert with other presumably adult people. (OK, so I am now revealed as pompous, uptight, humorless etc etc, but, if true, I will live with it.)
Nothing is private anymore. Verbal exhibitionism is the fashion. This kind of thing should be flushed for what it is.
It is said that C.S. Lewis’ great love of beer and extreme embarrassment over inquiring about the loo led to the breakdown of his health and subsequent death.
My husband reads the Bible in the bathroom. When he hears the call of nature, he simply says, “I need to go read the Bible.”
@Anne - “Is it SACRILEGIOUS to read holy books in the bathroom?”
Yes, and you’re going straight to hell!” ... ;-) j/k
I’ve done the same - been engrossed in a religious book when nature calls. Admittedly, I sometimes catch myself and wonder, is it appropriate? But I also believe God has a sense of humor. It must make Him chuckle to see His children doing something so good while doing something so human.
Higgledy Piggledy
Saint Athanasius
Rifled through volumes
with unseemly haste
Trying to find out if
Hagiographically
John of of Jerusalem
Liked almond paste
I hit the jackpot this year when at a thrift store I found a wall-mounted magazine rack with—- a toilet paper roll holder! Holds two rolls, even. I knackily installed it in it’s proper place and it now corrals all those newspapers, magazines and books.
My 10yo son made a discovery a few months ago. He came out of the bathroom and announced that, “Hey, I can read while I’m in the bathroom!” He knew his father did so, but perhaps it never occurred to him until that very moment that HE could also do so. I felt like patting him on the back and saying, “Now you’re a man, son.”
@bednar: thats great!
At my husbands family bach(holiday home) my kids and I discovered a book called Father Fox’s Pennyrhymes by Clyde Watson. So great, such rhymes as:
Oh my goodness, oh my dear
Sassafras and ginger beer
Chocolate cake and apple punch
I’m too full to eat my lunch!
and
Ride your red horse down Vinegar Lane
Gallop, oh gallop, oh gallop again
Thistles and foxholes and fences beware
I’ve seventeen children, but none I can spare
Simcha Fisher? That’s one woman who always knows where her towel is.
When my husband brings his laptop into the bathroom, we call it the crap-top. Kids love it.
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