Thread by @UrsulaV

Gather round, my Twitter peeps, and I shall tell you a tale of scientific curiosity wherein 2500 years of history converged upon my ass.

The ancient Greeks did not have toilet paper. They used ostraka, pottery shards. These were the scratch paper of Ancient Greece. You ate off them, dashed off notes on them, and when you’d read the note, you took it to the bathroom with you.

This seems a bit weird to us and our weak, Charmin-swaddled butts today, as we ask questions like “wouldn’t that be AWFULLY POINTY?!” but hey, you use what you got.

Some months ago, possibly inspired by the toilet paper shortage, @NeolithicSheep and I got into one of our performative arguments about ostraka, wherein I asked why, as a devotee of the ancient world, she had never tried it.

*they, sorry.

Shep yelled back that if I was that curious, I could do it myself and I said “MAYBE I WILL” because I am no weenie when it comes to science! But we had no terra-cotta shards on hand and so the subject was dropped.

Until today.

Today we went to Lowe’s because I had a gift card from Kevin’s folks and we needed caulk and I bought some cheap terra-cotta pots so that I could do something with all these lavender cuttings. And then Shep opened the door and stuff had shifted and a pot shattered on the drive.

“Hey look!” said Shep. “An ostrakan!” (That’s the singular.) “You could finally try it!”

“MAYBE I WILL!” I yelled.

This is the same base impulse that led me to doing a podcast about regrettable food. It is the reason I write books. I am curious and foolhardy and I just want to see what happens next.

Well, a few hours had to pass, because I cannot do some things on command, but at last the hour of reckoning was at hand.

...pointy.

And so, I did the deed. Carefully. Making sure pointy bits did not stray where pointy bits should not go.

And...you know, it wasn’t terrible. You’re basically using the shard as a scraper. Terra cotta, at least, is surprisingly absorbent compared to unglazed pottery. It would absolutely not work up front, as t’were, but as memory serves, they used vinegar-soaked sponges for that.

I really wanted to use the super smooth edge but I figured that the Greeks didn’t have machine-smoothed ceramic and also theirs was probably really gritty, so I used the broken edge. WE ARE THOROUGH IN OUR SCIENCE.

(That should have been “glazed pottery” above.)

Possibly this gets easier when you’ve been doing it your whole life, but man, you gotta pay CLOSE attention compared to paper. I had the steely focus of a raptor is what I’m saying.

The ostrakan went immediately into the trash en route to the dump. I finished off with Charmin to see how much...err...residue had been missed, and was impressed to find the ostrakan was quite thorough.

I would probably not want to try this with diarrhea, mind you.

Then I took a shower.

My nethers are still a little confused, but do not seem to have sustained any damage.

SO THERE SHEP I WIN
HA
IN YOUR FACE

...and now to sit back and watch my follower count drop like a barometer in a hurricane...