I had to laugh. I had to. I have been interviewing people all week for several articles I’m writing on RVing. I spoke with three women today - two older than me, one younger. And they all said pretty much the same thing - “When I learned I could use a bucket with a plastic bag and some cat litter and an old toilet seat for an emergency toilet in my trailer, I was okay with the idea of camping.”

Folks, these are attorneys and government administrators I’m talking to. Women who wear pearls and high heels to work, women who spend more on haircuts than I spend on food every week. And they’re using buckets for toilets because it’s part of camping.

The thing is - when you use a bucket when you’re homeless - it’s sad, disgusting, unhygienic. But when you’re at an RV rally with 40 other trailers with no bathroom and you don’t want to make the trek to the bathroom in the dark (usually on the other side of the campground), it’s “an adventure.”

So yeah, I laughed. How odd we are. What strange meanings we attach to the simple acts of being human. How funny that having a home to return to that has a toilet that flushes can somehow reach out into the wilderness to erase the stigma of a bucket and a bag of cat litter in a cheap little trailer we call “home” for a weekend. When we play at living in a toilet and showerless 20-year-old trailer - it’s fun. When it becomes our only option, it becomes shameful. It’s not the trailer, now is it? It’s the poverty. Let’s stop calling homelessness a disaster. It’s not. Poverty is.

Photo credit: blondieb38 from morguefile.com