McGee: A tale of the lad and the chamber pot

The Lady of the House and I were looking at some real estate on the Internet.

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One particular home caught her eye.

“It just has one bathroom though,” she said. “And it’s not near the master bedroom. It’s all the way at the other end of the house.”

“We’ll just have to get a chamber pot,” I said.

My statement was met with “The Look” by The Lady of the House.

“It is the year 2015,” she said slowly. “I am not using a chamber pot. And neither are you.”

“But it’s very useful,” I said. “I had one when I was a kid.”

It was long ago and far away.

I was just a lad.

Using the term “lad” seems to go well with a tale about a chamber pot.

The family was living with my grandparents while my dad was waiting to get his next job. I was given a bed upstairs. There was only one bathroom in the house and it was downstairs.

Next to the bed was a white enamelware pot with a red-trimmed lid.

“What’s that?” I asked my grandma as I pointed to it.

“Boy,” she said, squinting through the smoke of her filterless cigarette, “That’s a chamber pot. If you have to ‘go’ in the night you go in there. And when you come downstairs in the morning you bring it with you and flush it down the commode.”

“I don’t remember using that chamber pot but I remember I was always falling out of that bed,” I said to The Lady of the House. “The folks would be watching TV downstairs and there’d be this big ‘KAWHUMP’ sound and my grandma would look at my dad and say, ‘Well I reckon you better go up there and put that boy back in the bed.’”

“Nice story dear,” said The Lady of the House, “but we’ll not be using a chamber pot.”

I don’t know where I’d buy one anyway.

Grant McGee is a long-time broadcaster and former truck driver who rides bicycles and likes to talk about his many adventures on the road of life. Contact him at:

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