Remember back in 2020 when all hell broke loose? I’m talking about toilet paper hell. Yes, the pandemic was full-on at that point, but what seemed to really freak people out was the implied scarcity of 2-ply. We were living in Hawai’i at that point and had no fears about Costco runs or Target limits, because although we were a family of 6, we had bidets on our toilets.
For those of you who don’t enjoy potty talk, maybe skip this article, but (or should I say “butt”) everyone else please follow along on an evolutionary journey with me.
Like I’ve stated before, change is hard and sometimes we drag our feet even when we know something needs to be different. Other times we are simply naive to the fact that something needs to be different. It is like the age-old quote from Ten Things I Hate About You. “There’s a difference between like and love. I like my Sketchers but I love my Prada backpack,” says Bianca Stratford. Her movie bestie, Chastity Church replies, “But I love my Sketchers.” Very matter of factly Bianca retorts, “That’s because you don’t have a Prada backpack.” And just like that, the world made sense.
We, and a lot of other Americans, had previously been doing the derriere equivalent of wiping mud off our hands with dry paper towels. Pure madness. Only when potty training our kids did Ravi and I realize the folly of our ways. Even if we happened to run out of diaper wipes for our babies we would still dampen whatever medium we replaced them with and clean booties appeared. Oh, duh, the addition of water gets you cleaner. This was our homes’ introduction to wet-wipes. Pure logic.
Ravi’s first friends, and colleagues, in Hawai’i were Dr. Matt and Dr. Chris. Chris waxed poetic about his awesome new Toto brand commode. It was a Japanese toilet designed for the ultimate in cleanliness, comfort, and relaxation. We were still avid wet-wipe users at this point, ignorant to anything better, but our curiosity was piqued. One Amazon click and 3 days later we had 3 boxes of bidets, one for each toilet in our small home. Ravi excitedly installed them, worked out the hypotenuses of the proper angles, adjusted the force of the water, and voila! If someone told me nothing special happened that day, I’d have called them a gosh dang liar because six lives were changed forever. Matt’s wisdom filled words echoed in our ears, “Dude, a bidet will change your lives.” He was right. Fast forward to now.
Bathrooms in other places are intimidating. Bathrooms in planes? I don’t want to use them. Bathrooms in school? Our kids don’t want to use them. Bathrooms in India? No one wants to use them. I’m surprised I haven’t gotten a lifetime’s worth of constipation and UTI’s simply from “holding it” here. However, there is one crazy thing that Indian bathrooms have that I had not seen before, and that is a hose next to the toilet. If you are picturing a garden hose, then you would be correct except that they are typically metal. At the end of the hose, instead of an adorable gentle nozzle, perfectly suited for your delicate bits and pieces you are met with an aggressive metal sprayer capable of kicking out a psi that would make a fireman blush. It will blast off residue (residoo) that you never knew existed, making the epidermis of your crack tremble in fear. It makes our cute bidets back home feel like showers did in that Seinfeld episode where everyone had to add water pressure regulators. Sub par and totally unsuitable for the job at hand.
When we come back to the states, I think we might need to look at Toto’s line of high-powered toilets because right now in India we have a Prada backpack. Shout out to Matt for his life-changing advice.