They did what?

This week we are reading "When I Was Young in the Mountains." It is a picture book about a family in the Appalachian mountains. They are quite poor but very happy and content because of the love their family shares. The children in the book live with their grandparents and have no running water or indoor plumbing. My intent was to use the story to talk about the different types of families in the world and about being content with what you have instead of focusing on what you don't have.

We talked about those things but the children were more interested in the picture of the little girl headed to the outhouse in the middle of the night because she ate a second helping of fried okra. My kidlets wanted to know how an outhouse worked and were fascinated by the description. They talked about how scary it would be to go out at night to the outhouse and Gooseygirl declared that she never wanted to eat okra. They were having such fun I decided to add to their six year old fascination with bodily functions by telling them that toilet paper was a recent invention and prior to that they would use pages from catalogs and magazines.

RocketMan looked at me and said, "No they didn't mom. They used corn cobs."

Startled I said, "Who told you that, sweetie?"

"Oh, Dad did. He said his parents used to use corn cobs to wipe their bottoms", Gooseygirl replied with eyes dancing while holding back giggles.

Now, I sincerely doubt that my husband's parents, now deceased, used an outhouse but maybe Shawn was relaying a story about his parent's parents from long, long ago. Apparently Birdman hadn't been around when daddy shared this bit of family lore. He was floored.

One of his all time favorite foods is corn on the cob. You must understand that this boy LOVES to eat. He polishes off his plate before the rest of us. (Sometimes I feel like I'm raising hobbits. They have first breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, mid-day snack, dinner, supper, etc.) The thought that someone would willingly do something so gross with his beloved food was more than he could take. I saw the internal struggle he was having and said, "Ummmm... honey, they used old corn cobs. Not ones with actual corn still on them."

Relieved but still concerned, Birdman said, "Oh.... Mom, I'm glad we don't live in the mountains."

Some days our lessons are more fruitful than others. Today, my head is still spinning as I try to figure out how I got from a discussion about contentment versus envy all the way to outhouses.