TP. 176. BATHROOMS 2

When fish crawled out of the sea and began its ascent, both up the shoreline and up the tree of life, on its journey to become mammals, 2 things changed. Its fins morphed into segmented appendages to help it negotiate land obstacles, and it no longer defecated into the water behind its movement. Terra Firma was the new toilet. When the Homo models started specializing and became socialized, they congregated into groups and achieved enough intelligence to realize that the defecation process should be done away from the group’s habitat. Thus, the very first bathroom was in a dead-end pocket in a cave. Later, when tools came on the scene, holes could be dug for the stool collection points. Farther down the road, when tree harvesting yielded lumber and skill sets developed carpenters, structures were built to protect the occupants from marauding predators and inclement weather. They were called outhouses because they were out of the general congregation points of families due to the odors emminating from the decomposition of the wastes. Then, 1 day, for ease of access, someone put the outhouse in. In the home, that is. Going back to our fish days, someone realized that water can transport human wastes away from the home to either a septic tank, cesspool, sewage treatment plant or 100′ away, a government community’s choice. Once the water trap was perfected to seal off sewer odors, Bathrooms became the 2nd most used rooms in the home. The 1st is the room that creates the need to evacuate; it was known as the kitchen. Everything worked out well for the human race except for those 2 time intervals in all human existence: newborns and old-diers (geriatrics). For these 2 groups, engineers took down forests and constructed the most versatile, convenient bathroom toilet ever. They called it a diaper.