if i lived in any other time period

Okay, I tried, for about a second, but I just can’t play along with this one. I often have trouble with that whole temporary suspension of disbelief thing.

On one of the prompt sites I have saved, a recent question was something like, “If you could live in any other time period, when would you choose, and why?”

I think I have it about as great as a woman is going to have “it.” (And we’re not there yet, baby.)

I’ll go with what I used to think about, though, when I was a lot younger. I used to think that I’d like to live in Renaissance England (I was weirdly obsessed with its literature at a very young age). However, all I can think now is “Really?”

My mom tells me that I have never liked to be dirty. She says that with my first birthday cake, I daintily picked a few morsels from the top and then flipped the little cake over on my highchair tray. I wasn’t one of those babies who dug her chubby little hands and face into the cake. (It took Pic a minute to really dig into her cake. She kept looking at us like, “I’d really like to grab a handful of that, but this must be a trap. Could I possibly get away with this?”)

So, how well do you think I’d fare somewhere where regular bathing indicated something like a bath a few times a year? (Okay, so I actually have no idea how often the average person bathed, but it wasn’t often. And, I figure I’d be just some average woman, no one fancy.) Um, and there’s that whole issue of indoor plumbing (or lack thereof) and the taking of the wall. Blech. And, I wouldn’t be washing my clothes all that often, because what would I be wearing when my one ensemble was taking a soak in a probably disgusting river or washbasin?

I’m not a huge fan of body odor, not even my own, and no amount of parfum could be all that helpful. In fact, I always figured that people who tried to mask their odors with eau de toilette smelled, well, like a toilet…with maybe a really ineffective air freshener sprayed on. (On a somewhat unrelated side note, my mom also told me that once in toddlerdom, I swallowed a bottle of eua de toilette. Had I been able to read at that point, I’m sure I never would have sipped on something that included toilet in its name.)

And, there’s that whole sex issue. I am a woman. A woman who is perfectly happy having only one child (a woman who would prefer to keep it that way for always). I can’t imagine being a baby machine (a small-human-worker machine). And, there’s the whole issue of me being, essentially, chattel.

So, yeah, where do I sign up?

By the way, I don’t claim that any of the picture I’ve given of Renaissance England society is accurate, this is just how I’m imagining it based on what I’ve gleaned over the years. Feel free to right me right up.