Outhouse Trauma

I’m still recovering from yesterday’s outhouse experience. We went to the Aloha Festival at Tempe Beach Park and the City of Tempe had “Out of Order” signs on all the public restrooms. Instead, they had outhouses. One look inside the door and Alyssa took off running and screaming. Meanwhile, her legs were crossed and she kept repeating, “My pee pee is coming! My pee pee is coming!” I tried to convince her to use the potty and she refused. It was like you watched your cat get ran over by a car… the screaming was that bad!!!

After finally calming her down, explaining that there are no other places to go potty, and offering a treat to try using the potty like a big girl, we went inside. Of course, she looked down inside the potty and started screaming again. She tried to get down and run away because she thought she would fall in the big hole. Then, because she was scared, she refused to go. It took everything I had to calm her so that she would finally go and we could get the heck out of there. If you know me well, you know that I would rather wait hours than to ever use an outhouse. This was a moment I’d rather have avoided.

While the experience was the most traumatic one we’ve had, the reward was a yummy Hawaiian ice. It helped us forget the trauma in the outhouse.