I wrote this entire newsletter and then decided to change it completely. What changed my mind, you ask? The following News feed post:



I loved the comments and the question itself came out of nowhere but it brought on different memories. I grew up in the city but I loved the farm life at my grandma's house. I also enjoyed indoor pluming even though it wasn't always available - drought would dry up that well really fast. However, my great-grandma lived much further out in, what I thought looked like a big house, without any indoor pluming. If you wanted a drink of water, you go outside and put some muscle into it to fill up a cup at the water pump. I also remember that outhouse. Off to the side, with a long dark hallway made out of wooden boards with barely any light penetrating it during the day, let alone at night. When the dark arrived, it felt as if you were walking to the gallows. And of course, you could hear random things splashing inside that deep round hole.

Why didn't anyone have a flash light?! What about an oil lamp? Something! Instead, we'd walk down that creepy corridor into the unknown. I'm going to say I was little and always needed someone to go with me. For #1, they'd give me a pot to pee in. I know! Too much information. (Come to think of it now, I hope they never cooked in it! )

Anyway, during the day, that property looked so pretty, almost out of a fairy-tale book. Cherry tree to the side and a big oak tree for shade, a small summer house, and I do mean small, and chickens everywhere. But at night... At night, that place looked different, felt different.

Many times I've been told that the dark figure of a man standing to the side of the house was my imagination or that hearing someone cry outside for hours when great-grandma passed away was only the wind. And maybe it was. Maybe it was just a child's imagination. I dismissed it quickly, forgot about it over the years.

All the bad things became a distant memory and only the good stayed. Kind of like real fairy-tales we read as children. Kids dismiss the bad and see only the good because no one is born bad. We believe in the good. Yet, as the time goes on and we grow up we look back on those same stories and think that they were actually bad, some even terrifying. And with that, we have our opinions about removing them from market.

In many ways, there's a lesson to be learned in those books. Something we might experience later on in life. Where do you think red flags come from? It's not by seeing them but by recognizing them. And if we don't present them to kids at a young age, then when?

My point is, just because they're called fairy-tales doesn't mean they are made of cotton candy and rainbow unicorns. There's a darkness in those stories necessary for the growth of ones mind, no matter how big or small. They're the first lessons in life we ignore and only realize later on what they were.

So, you see, an outhouse, even if it comes complete with a Sears Catalogue, is never what it seems. There might be a lesson to be learned from it later in life.

'til next time!
~ Gaby