“Outhouse” Suisant7, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper long ago stopped being concerned with the random—some might say “garbage-can” nature of his thought process. Were it not for this, he might fret over the fact that for 60-70 years there has been stored in his memory a phrase that the wonderful Milwaukee nature writer Mel Ellis used in an article about the opening morning of Wisconsin’s deer season: Noting that he had put his long underwear on backwards the previous night, Mel wrote about “fumbling moments of consternation” in the outhouse on the following morning.
Perhaps only in the mind of a word juggler would such a phrase have weed-like persistence, but in any case, it rose to the surface recently when the keeper experienced several “fumbling moments of consternation” upon discovering that his undershorts were on backwards.
There is, of course, risk in discussing such a personal matter—and in noting the obvious, that underwear on backwards may not be the issue for women that it is for men and their exterior plumbing; but the keeper has no qualms about dealing with the subject, and is in fact relieved to abandon his usual rant targets and admit that there was some perverse pleasure in once again sympathizing with Mel in the outhouse during his “fumbling moments of consternation.”
