Hartley Neita

The village in which I grew in my childhood years did not have a domestic water supply system. Consequently, there were no bathrooms inside the house. Instead, there was an outhouse, which had the kitchen, a bathroom in which there was a large bath pan made of heavy tin, and room in which there was a pit latrine.

In the bedrooms in the village there was a washstand with a large enamel washbasin and a goblet of water. This was for washing our faces before going to bed. And under the beds were enamel chimmies, podies, wee-wee or pee-pee pots for use during the night.

Jamaica College had a domestic water supply system. There were showers and water closets downstairs, and upstairs alongside the dormitories there were washbasins. However, after lights out at night, we boarders were not allowed to leave the dormitories. So to accommodate those with full bladders during the night, each dormitory had a large podie.

grub initiation

There were two nights during which we grubs (and not grunts as I recalled last week) were initiated. During the first night, boys who slept on their backs woke with a pain in their big toes. This was caused by bigger boys from other dormitories who tiptoed from bed to bed, cracking the toes of the sleeping grubs with hair brushes.

Those of us who slept on our stomachs did not escape; our heels were cracked. That, of course, was not the end. Two hours later we screamed awake when the wax from burning candles was dripped in our hair. Naturally, no one slept during the rest of the night.

It was the second night that I discovered that podies had a royal use in addition to what I had been accustomed to in my village home. After doing homework and walking upstairs to our dormitory, we were greeted by about a dozen bigger boys who were standing in two parallel lines facing each other. Each boy had a pillow in his hand.

Another boy stood at the end of the lines with the podie in his hand. Each of us grubs were ordered to face this latter boy who then placed the podie on our head. Now this podie was much larger than those we boys from the country were accustomed to and it covered our eyes.

"Say, after me,"|the boy intoned. "Sum Rex Podeorum." In other words, "I am the King of the Podie."

Each of us responded as we were ordered. Terrified.

"Now turn around and run the gauntlet between the lines," we were told.

One by one, each of us was crowned, and one by one we raced between the lines and felt the pillows pounding on our heads.

When the torture was over we crawled into our beds with headaches. And we gave thanks that no one had yet used the podie.

In later years, I discovered that every boy who went to a boarding school had been a King of the Podie. Thank heavens we were only crowned on one night.