December 27

If you have ever lived in a building that had low water pressure, or lived in a home one other person and only one and a half bathrooms, you may have encountered the problem of someone flushing while you were in the shower, the result of which drenched you with very hot water. The first reaction is to lash out at the offending individual who flushed offering strong arguments justifying the flusher’s placement in a spot on the food chain beneath amoebas. I thought I had stumbled onto a wisecrack for use in just that circumstance when I read about the Flushing Remonstrance. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that what I had found was a bird of very a different feather. The Flushing Remonstrance is a document crafted in the 17th century. It was signed on the 27th in 1657. The document's intent was to be a protest against the religious persecution carried out by Peter Stuyvesant in the Dutch settlement in what is today the county of Queens in New York City. The document is considered by many to be one of the seminal documents drawn on when drafting the United States’ founding fathers were crafting our country’s Constitution. Therefore, the next time you are caught in the shower and someone flushes the toilet try to remember that screaming at them in Dutch is not really going to get your point across.