“Pippi Longstocking liked being a pirate,” the girl said thoughtfully.

“That was in the days before they had computers or video games. And she was a very unusual little girl.”

“I guess so.”

“Besides, being a pirate is mostly boring. Just sailing in empty oceans without a ship in sight.”

“It’s not that way in all the movies, though.”

“The movies don’t show you everything. When was the last time a movie showed a pirate going to the bathroom?”

The girl giggled. “I bet they didn’t even have soft toilet paper back then. Just the scratchy stuff like at school.”

“They didn’t even have toilet paper at all.”

The girl stared. “But—how did they wipe?”

“Sailors used the frayed end of an old anchor line. Other people used corncobs or mussel shells.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Eww. That’s nasty.“

“Or they might use pages from books. Most people couldn’t read back then, so there wasn’t anything else they were good for.”

The girl looked thoughtfully at her school bookbag. “Hmmm…”