Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[whistling]
[instrumental music]
When I was-when I was, um, a young child,
probably a year old, my, uh, yeah, about a year old.
It was a long time ago. [audience laughing]
Who said that? Was that Geneva? [audience laughing]
I thought that w- as old as I am though- [audience laughing]
[Joyce laughing]
I didn't say it.
Anyway, um, when I was- when I was, uh, born, I was their first child.
The very first child of my mom and dad.
You know, that's supposed to be the privileged child.
Well, I learned right off what the privilege was.
When I was a year old, um, I had a baby sister, named, uh, Barbara.
And I got to be the one who went to the pile over there
and say, "Honey, would you go over and get one of those for Mama?"
So, you know...'cause I walked when I was nine months.
I was, uh, uh, you know, an achiever. [audience laughing]
[sighing] Yeah.
Well, my mother had this thing about, uh, being, um, being, you know, with diapers.
She didn't like- she didn't like diapers.
She-my mother didn't get married 'til she was 28 and so, she really didn't-
she wasn't into that baby mode.
She was into going into the office and being a stenographer.
And when she got married at 28, I came along when she was 30.
So, she thought everybody oughta be- oughta be potty-trained
by the time they were 12 months old.
You know, we started sitting on a little toilet at six months.
If you could sit up, you could sit on a toilet.
And we had those little toilets that had that little swing thing that went over the top, ya know.
A little tray right there.
You could eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, right there. [audience laughing]
And all you-and you got a real treat from it,
you had this little ring around your butt that was almost like a permanent scar.
Well, of course, when I was a year old,
I told you I had-I had to, uh, start working for my living there,
getting diapers for the next baby because there is something,
you know a lot of things about me,
but you don't know that- that, uh,
I eventually became a three-year-old dirty-diaper dipper and dryer.
I know it's a sad thing to think about.
When I was two, of course, there was only one baby in diapers.
The one that was born. At two, there were three of us. So at two, my mother would say,
"Joyce, take this diaper and put it in the toilet. I'll take care of it later."
So, okay, that was easy enough.
But by the time I was three,
I had to learn the fine art of dipping and flushing at the same time
and not losing that diaper down the hole. And I did.
My mother-my mother was proud of us
and-and being able to say to all of her friends
that all of her babies were-were potty-trained
by the time she was- by the time we were a year old.
Of course, she was trained, we weren't.
She just knew when it was gonna happen.
I-I-she took us one time to an exhibit
and there was a toilet there from an old German preschool.
It had like eight slots and a big thing that came over the top.
So I guess, kids all over the world
could sit and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, right there on the toilet seat.
Now when- before I was five years old, we lived in an apartment.
And I learned how to wash those diapers too
'cause we had a big washing machine and it was pink.
And my mother would show me how to hook that hose up
to the-up to the faucet in the toi-in the tub.
And we would just put hot water in there,
and we would go and take care of the babies
and every once in a while, it would go over the side.
And then the people below would get to see we were washing clothes
and so she taught me how to do that.
But when, you know, when I was three, and I distinctly remembered this,
I know nobody has told me this story,
but I remember going on this trip to California,
my daddy had a, uh, one of those station wagons with the wood on the side.
And so, he said, "We're gonna go to California," 'cause he loved California.
He wanted to live in California, but my mother tried it for a year
and she said, "That's no good for me. I love Missouri."
So, back to Missouri we c-
I could have been a California girl, but I'm a Missouri girl.
Anyway, Grandma went with us.
Now I thought my grandma had more sense than to go on a vacation
with three children and my mother and my father,
but she went with us and there we all were in that *** station wagon.
And, along the way, when Margaret, the third sister, who was still in diapers
'cause she wasn't quite a year old yet,
we would stop at a service station
and, of course, I had to do the dipping, you know,
and then we'd get in the car and there would be these nice, wet diapers
so my job was to hold them out the window.
It was hot out there in the summertime,
we never went on vacation except in August,
you know, to California, through the desert.
And all of a sudden, the wind whipped that diaper outta my hand.
I thought and my grandma turned around and she said, "Now the Indians have it!"
[audience laughing]
I looked out the window, I swear I didn't see a single Indian.
I saw sand, but no Indians.
I thought, "What are they gonna do with a diaper?
"Will they wear it like a scarf?"
I thought it was the end of my diaper-dryin' days.
But no, she figured it out my grandma.
She got the next diaper and she tied it around my wrist.
[audience laughing]
So, now, you know my secret. Dirty diaper dipping.
That's just a little piece of who I am.
[audience clapping]
I still have that little toilet too.
I've been to toilets all over the world and they're all different.
Some of them, they just give you a whole in the ground.
And you have to squat.
You know, you better be good with your yoga and everything
before you go to places like China or even the South of France.
You think they're civilized. Huh.
I thought because I'd been to China,
I would tell you a Chinese story to fill out the rest of my time.
And um, it's a story about a boy named *** Nom.
He was a basket weaver. He loved weaving baskets.
His mother had taught him from the time he was a little child.
And she would take those baskets on-on the-to market, on the weekends
and sell the baskets.
And one day she said to him, "If you make a lot of baskets,
"I'll let you go to the market all by yourself
"and you can sell the baskets and you can use some of the money for whatever you want."
Oh, he was so excited. He worked so hard that week.
He made baskets that were flat. He made baskets that had handles.
He made round baskets, he made little, tiny baskets,
he made baskets that fit inside each other.
He made baskets that were pointed
that looked like a hat when you put it on upside down.
He made beautiful baskets with different colors of-of-of reed.
They were so beautiful and at the end of the week he had so many baskets
his mother didn't know how he was gonna carry all those baskets,
so she made him kinda like a big backpack and opened it up
and stuffed baskets in there and fixed it on his back
and then stacked those hat-looking baskets on top of his head
and all of those with- with handles he put on his arms and he went off.
He started thinking about all the things he would love to buy when he was gone.
Oh, he would buy something for his father and for his mother,
but what he really wanted to buy was a writing pen for himself,
like a brush with a long, pointed tip.
Oh, that would be so wonderful because his dream was to learn to write.
And so, off he went,
but part of the way there he heard this rustle in the grass, and this rustling,
and then he heard this noise like something was fighting,
like birds were fighting and he wanted to see what it was.
And he-he- he put his baskets down
and he went over into the- into the thicket and he saw two pheasant.
And they were fighting, but not with each other.
They were fighting to protect their nest where their babies were
and there was a snake heading for their nest.
Well, *** Nom, he just picked up a rock and he thought,
"I'll just-I'll just make this snake go away."
And he threw the sn- threw the rock at the snake to kinda scare him off
and sure enough, the snake didn't bother those pheasant anymore.
He picked up his baskets and on he went.
And that was the best market day for him, he set up his little stand,
he sold every single basket, every one, oh, he was so- he was so proud of himself.
He had all this-this money. He hadn't seen that much money before.
So, he walked around the whole market
and he found some lovely slippers for his father
and then he found a bolt of cloth for his mother to make a dress.
Oh, he thought his mother would love it
because it was-it was- they were the colors of spring
and it looked like butterflies all over, oh, he knew she would love that.
And then, after searching all the booths,
he found one that had writing utensils and he bought a brush.
And he put all of that in that backpack his mother had made him
and he started home.
But it was so late. He didn't realize it was so late.
You know, he had-he had stayed too long
and it was starting to get dark and it got darker and darker.
And pretty soon, he didn't realize where he was. He'd lost his way.
[sighing]
He really didn't want to stay, he wanted to get home as fast as he could.
He kept trying to find the path, but he couldn't find it
and then he saw, he saw a light in the distance
so he thought, "A house."
He made his way to the house and he knocked on the door
and a woman, oh, was she beautiful.
She opened the door and she said, "Welcome to my house.
"I saw you on the path, I've been waiting for you."
And so he went in and there spread on a low table
were delicacies like he had not eaten in a long time.
There were deer tendons, there were dumplings, there were chickens,
oh, he ate and ate and ate, until he couldn't eat any more.
And he noticed that the woman had disappeared.
When she came back, he was stand- she was standing before him.
All dressed in this beautiful yellow gown.
And her long black hair hung around her shoulders
and she said, "I have been waiting for you."
He said, "How did you know?"
She said, "I was on the path this morning. You killed me."
He said, "No, I didn't kill anything. I didn't kill any-anybody."
She said, "Do you remember the pheasant? ...I am that snake."
He said, "I only-I only threw that to, uh, to warn you
"to stay away from them, I did not mean to kill you, I didn't kill you, uh, really,
"I didn't kill you, I didn't mean to do, I didn't."
[whispering] She said, "Oh, yes you did."
And that yellow dress began to unravel
and it became the tail of a beautiful yellow and black snake
just like the one he had seen on the trail.
He said, "Really, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
"If I-I killed you, I didn't mean to kill you."
She said, "I have come back for you."
He said, "I need to go home.
"My parents are waiting for me. I need to go."
She said, "You cannot leave." [laughing]
"You are mine now." [laughing]
He said, "Just let me go home and tell them what's happened."
She said, "No."
"Is there nothing I can do? Please."
She said, "You see through that window? There is a bell tower.
"If you can make that bell ring before midnight, your life is yours."
And he started for the door and as he started,
she became the longest snake, she wrapped herself clear around that room
blocking every exit, in front of every window.
She said, "You must ring it from here."
[laughing] "You are lost."
So he started yelling out the window for help.
He cried and he yelled and he beat on the walls,
he thought somebody should hear me, but nobody heard him,
he cried again and again out the window
and finally he was so exhausted he slumped to the floor and he just sat there
because he realized, he was going to die... he was going to die.
And she just lay there around the room. [laughing]
It got later and later. And there was a timepiece in the room
and he noticed that it was-it was very close to midnight.
It was like one minute.
So he started screaming at the top of his voice out that window.
"Please, someone! Someone help me please! Please!
"I don't wanna die! I wanna go home to my mother, my father,
"I don't wanna die. Please!"
And just as the hand was on 12, he heard the bell begin to ring.
And it rang and it rang and it rang and it rang
and it rang and when it did, that snake disappeared.
And that house around him disappeared. And he sat there, exhausted.
He fell over into a deep sleep.
And when he awoke the next morning,
he could still see that bell tower over there.
He took his backpack and ran as fast as he could to the tower
and there on the floor of the tower, were those two pheasant.
There beaks broken. Their wings injured. But they were still alive.
He scooped them up and he took them home
and his mother used all of her healing powers and brought them back.
They found the babies and joined the mother and father with the babies again.
And just like *** Nom was joined with his mother and father,
where he stayed and lived a long life taking care of them. Thank you.
[audience clapping]
[instrumental music]