A small mystery solved

I was just reading the comments to this little piece about "bringing back beloved words that nobody uses anymore" and came across this: "Whore’s bath: phr., quick bath washing primarily privates."

Funny! I knew pretty much every phrase anyone had sent in, but not that one. Then I said it out loud and realized I do know it. When I was a little kid I heard my uncle use it to describe the way you bathe when you're visiting relatives and don't want to tie up the bathroom all morning. Instead of taking a regular bath or shower, you just stand at the sink with your shirt off and splash water on your face and armpits. He called it a "horse bath."

This particular uncle was one of my favorite uncles, largely because he had a farm with large animals (including horses) and because he and his wife are such kind and welcoming, down to earth kinds of people. They have ten or eleven kids and usually seemed to have at least a few additional people staying with them (grandparents, in-laws, foster kids, etc.), which meant that there was pretty much always something interesting to do when we visited their place. Growing up I always knew or at least believed that if anything ever happened to my parents, we would all go to his house to live, and that made me feel a little less stressed out about all the horrible things that can happen to parents.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time over the years contemplating that phrase, "horse bath." How did the horses get the water up into their armpits and other important areas? Did they splash it up with their tails somehow? Or with their feet? Maybe they found a running hose and walked in front of it, or lowered themselves into puddles. Whenever I was around horses I made a point of finding their watering trough, in hopes I would come across one bathing, but I never did. Now I know why.

The mystery that remains now is, what did my uncle actually say? I'm sure he knew the "original" version of the phrase – he'd been in the army and is rumored (by my older cousins) to have been quite a bit more colorful in his language as a younger man than I knew him to be later in his life. But I wouldn't have known the word "whore" at that age. So did he really say "horse bath," or did I just think that was what he'd said?

It makes me laugh to think of myself saying "horse bath" all these years and not knowing until just a few minutes ago that there's been this other phrase all along. I guess you really do learn something new every day.