It’s a word of my own coinage, particular to post-childbirth and post-menopausal experiences—a mashup of “chortle” and “tinkle.” A mashup word for the mashup experience. A chinkle is a laugh that makes you wee a little.

At the risk of venturing into TMI territory: in earlier stages of my life, damp panties were indicative of something entirely different. These days it’s a combined measure of my age and a joyful life, not to mention a spouse who causes me frequently to laugh.

Case in point. I know all the bathrooms and rest stops along the route between our house and our boat. At one of those, we always “coffee up” with a venti espresso drink—so I’m always VERY very ready for the next toilet by the time we get to it. At a moment when he was my hero for bringing me to a bathroom, Jon added a soundtrack to his driving. Swooping into the curve of the exit, it was Ride of the Valkyries! Dun-da-da-DUN-da, Dun-da-da-DUN-da, Dun-da-da-DUN-da, dun-da-da-DUN! Wagner had no idea he was writing a heroic peeing song.

On a tangentially related topic… I was just reading about things people used to use before toilet paper existed. More than anything, this list makes me grateful to live in the twenty-first century! A close second, though, after “grateful,” is puzzled. Some items—like moss, or leaves, or a sponge on a stick—make perfect sense. I can easily see how those would be used. Heck, even corncobs I can figure out.

Some of the others, though… I’m just having trouble grasping the, um, logistics. Straw, and feathers, for example. Aside from the note that one of those sounds a lot less comfortable than the other, I’m trying to grasp how one would, well, grasp these items, in order to implement their use. A fistful of feathers? Yeah, I’m puzzled.

I should have said, before, that I’m grateful to live when and where I do. Only 35% of the world’s people actually use toilet paper, it turns out. I had no idea that number would be so low, though I did at least know that TP isn’t ubiquitous. One of the first things I learned in the Philippines was to keep Kleenex in my pocket. I don’t mind going with “drip-dry,” but for messier functions… What you find in restrooms in the Philippines (homes as well as public bathrooms) is a water cup.

For the most part I consider myself an intrepid traveler, but I was not intrepid enough to inquire of my new acquaintances about technique. If I tried to splash myself clean, I’d come out wearing the water—and anyway what do you do if things aren’t… splash-off-able? I carried Kleenex.

There’s one more category of TP stand-ins: the ones I could figure out how to use, but never-in-a-million-years would have thought of to USE for the purpose. Top of this list? Mussel shells. That’s right, picture yourself scraping clean with a clamshell. Yikes. We also have: flat sticks and bamboo, rocks, and smoothed-off pottery shards.

There’s apparently even a reference in a Greek comedy by Aristophanes: “Three stones are enough to wipe one’s arse.” But my favorite bit of TP trivia? Evidently the Greeks and Romans sometimes wrote an enemy’s name on a pot shard before using it to scrape their poo. I wipe my arse with thee!

I just wonder how they TP’d people’s houses back then. Chinkle Chinkle!