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On nuns and chamber pots...
Dec. 19th, 2012 12:19 pmI finished reading Ed McBain's The Big Bad City, which was an entertaining installment of his 87th Precinct series of novels. During the course of events in the book—one thread of which involved a murdered nun—the author allowed his cop characters to let loose with several "nun jokes," none of which bear repeating as attempts at humor, but one of which did get me to thinking.
The joke concerns a nun who is driving along in her car, runs out of gas, and walks up the road to a gas station, only to find the only container available for her to take gas back to her car is a chamber pot. Returning to her car with the gasoline-filled chamber pot, she begins the process of pouring the contents into her gas tank when a passing car stops and the driver says, "I wish I had your faith, sister!"
What gave me pause about this story is the appearance—or rather, non-appearance (in my mind's eye)—of that chamber pot.
Do you, dear reader, even know what a chamber pot might be?
And if you have heard of chamber pots, and you know what they're used for, is there any particular image of what might be called a "quintessential" chamber pot that pops into your mind?
That's what really got me thinking. Forgetting what little humor there is in the story, if the nun had returned to her car carrying a gas can, it would have been pretty apparent what the container was from its appearance, whether it was a 5-gallon parallelepiped of a "jerry can," or a dinky little one-gallon "approved gasoline container" than looks a little like a super-sized red soft drink cup with a straw stuck in it.
And despite the fact I not only know about chamber pots but have seen them in use (and have actually used them!), I have to tell you, there is nothing particularly visually unique about a chamber pot.
And so, of course, the geek began to wonder: How did the driver in the story know the sister was using a chamber pot?
To which, out of the blue, the answer came: Because it had once belonged to the driver of the passing vehicle!
There's got to be a story in there, somewhere.
The joke concerns a nun who is driving along in her car, runs out of gas, and walks up the road to a gas station, only to find the only container available for her to take gas back to her car is a chamber pot. Returning to her car with the gasoline-filled chamber pot, she begins the process of pouring the contents into her gas tank when a passing car stops and the driver says, "I wish I had your faith, sister!"
What gave me pause about this story is the appearance—or rather, non-appearance (in my mind's eye)—of that chamber pot.
Do you, dear reader, even know what a chamber pot might be?
And if you have heard of chamber pots, and you know what they're used for, is there any particular image of what might be called a "quintessential" chamber pot that pops into your mind?
That's what really got me thinking. Forgetting what little humor there is in the story, if the nun had returned to her car carrying a gas can, it would have been pretty apparent what the container was from its appearance, whether it was a 5-gallon parallelepiped of a "jerry can," or a dinky little one-gallon "approved gasoline container" than looks a little like a super-sized red soft drink cup with a straw stuck in it.
And despite the fact I not only know about chamber pots but have seen them in use (and have actually used them!), I have to tell you, there is nothing particularly visually unique about a chamber pot.
And so, of course, the geek began to wonder: How did the driver in the story know the sister was using a chamber pot?
To which, out of the blue, the answer came: Because it had once belonged to the driver of the passing vehicle!
There's got to be a story in there, somewhere.
