How to Be Happy #40: If You Think Things Are Horrible Today…

have an odd suggestion for cheering yourself up: go to the Mental Floss website and read A.J. Jacobs’ blog “The Bad Old Days.” Here’s a short list of some of the articles available:

• 6 Ways the Past Stank–Literally
• 7 Ways Dating in the Past Was Terrible
• 6 Ways Christmases Past Used to Be Terrible
• 8 Ways Gym Classes Used to Be So Much Worse

To moodevate [elevate one’s disposition] this morning, I chose “4 Reasons a Day at the Beach in Times Past Was No Day at the Beach.” The first reason now is better than then, then being Victorian times, is “a swim in the ocean was a whole production.” The laborious process for women (of course) wanting to swim involved entering one end of a “bathing machine” fully clothed, changing into your swimwear as horses pulled the box into the surf, and then exiting the machine via steps on the other end into the water. Some machines had canvas canopies to “shield” the bathers from “prying eyes.” If you have watched the PBS Masterpiece series “Sanditon,” you’ve seen these machines in action.

Reason number two is that, back then, “going into the ocean was serious business.” Jacobs writes,

Resort doctors saw cold ocean water as a cure for everything: leprosy, ulcers, tumors, jaundice, scurvy, depression. Bathers were submerged repeatedly in the freezing water until near-suffocation by a specially trained employee called a “bathing woman” (or “dipper”), then reinvigorated with feet warmers and back rubs and tea.

Some doctors even prescribed drinking sea water, “though no more than one pint a day.”

The third reason for preferring beaches today is that way back when “the bathing suits were even less comfortable than thongs” (again, for women in particular). Female swimmers wore long wool dresses and bloomers accessorized with “black stockings, caps, collars, puffed sleeves, ribbons, bows, and lace-up slippers.” Jacobs notes that these bathing “costumes” sometimes used nine yards of fabric and had “weights attached to the hem to keep the dress from rising up.”

And the final reason for thanking your lucky stars that you go swimming today and not anytime before, say, 1950 is “the beach was a cesspool.” Literally. Jacobs relates how the beach in Blackpool, England, had “45 pipes emptying raw sewage directly into the water where people swam.” In New York, people kept an eye out for “Coney Island whitefish,” slang for “used condoms that were routinely tossed into the sea.” While beaches today do suffer occasionally from onslaughts of fecal matter in places and our plastic detritus is everywhere, raw sewage, thankfully, is not a common sight.

To moodevate even further, I pondered how my here and now is better than my there and then. Some of the things I remember with a shudder include the following:

• Powdered milk. My siblings and I grew up on pale, thin (skimmer than skim) milk, often with lumps of undissolved powder floating around in it.
• Short, wide-wale corduroy pants, paisley shirts, and dickies. If your formative years were the 1960s, you, like me, were probably a walking fashion nightmare. I remember wearing baby-poop-brown wide-wale, purple paisley, bright yellow socks, a black dickey, and penny loafers (with pennies, naturally). OMG.
• Keggers. Having fun was a trial for the underaged (and likely still is but, since I am now overaged, I don’t need to worry about it). Parties usually involved organizing an expedition outside the city limits and into the local woods where the highlight was a keg or two of soon-to-be warm and flat cheap beer. Now, I can get soused, if I so desire, in much more comfortable places, some even with live music and bathrooms.

That’s just the tip of the Baby Boomer iceberg, but I don’t think I need go further. Today’s lesson is probably clear by now. Make your own list of how your life is better today than in your personal bad old days or, if you need more of a boost, how it might have been if you had come into this world anytime before the 20th century. Feel better now? I knew you would.