Years ago, on the way to Florida, my best friend and I played the “Best of All-Time” game, in which competitors must argue for the best of all time in a variety of categories:
Movies. Books. Dictators. Handheld kitchen appliances. Pick-up lines.
You name it. Anything goes.
When it came to “Best Invention of All-Time,” my buddy said, “Indoor plumbing,” without the slightest hesitation. In a game of hemming and hawing, qualifying and justifying, an instantaneous answer is rare. My initial reaction was that there was no way in hell that indoor plumbing could be more important than inventions like the printing press, the wheel, the plow, or even the computer.
But after almost two decades spent searching for an invention better than indoor plumbing, I’ve decided that my friend was right. The fact that we can turn a faucet and be instantly supplied with clean water at various temperatures is completely underappreciated in modern society. Ridding ourselves of our waste products with the simple flush of the toilet is something for which we should be thanking the Gods of Porcelain on bent knees every day.
Indoor plumbing – absent any medication or vaccination – has also effectively eliminated some of the world’s most persistent and deadly diseases, including dysentery, cholera, and typhoid fever.
Don’t get me wrong. The other inventions I mentioned are essential, too, but when you put them in context, I think the truth becomes rather apparent.
The wheel, for example, sounds pretty good until you consider the prospect of a wheelbarrow or an Oldsmobile driving through a street clogged with human waste.
Also, for the record, the wheel wasn’t the game-changer. It was the axle. Wheels are cute, but without axles, they are far less helpful.
The printing press is excellent, but if every family member has died from the plague, who cares if you have any books to read? Admittedly, the printing press allows for the dissemination of information over time, so it’s much harder to develop indoor plumbing and all that it requires without books to hold the information, but I’d still take indoor plumbing over books.
Electricity seems crucial to everyday life, but if you’re pooping in your backyard and urinating against trees, then candles and icehouses don’t seem so bad.
If you think I’m wrong, spend a day without electricity. Though inconvenient, you may find the return to simpler times refreshing. Read a book. Cook your dinner over an open fire. Enjoy the absence of the internet. Gather with the family in the evening for a game of cards over candlelight.
Then, spend a day without the use of a bathroom. Spend the morning digging a trench in the backyard. There is no shower, so after all that digging, fill a bathtub with bottled water and bathe in your own filth. Later that day, defecate in the trench, hoping the mail carrier or the ten-year-old girl next door isn’t looking out her bedroom window at the wrong time. Watch your family defecate in the same trench throughout the day. Pray that you are not contaminating the groundwater with your backyard latrine or attracting a hoard of mosquitoes infected with Lyme disease. Get up in the middle of the night, drag a saucepan from beneath your bed, and pee into it. Throw this saucepan away the following day and fill in the trench.
Indoor plumbing wins every time.
