We Have Come a Long Way (Thank God!)

Do you believe in reincarnation? I always did, namely that I was the energy of my 19th century great-great grandmother, Princess Aline wearing a modern, albeit darker bodily suit. I can wholeheartedly embrace the wigs and corsets, gossip and intrigue. Where I start having doubts, though is when it comes to bathrooms: could I really, in a previous life, have allowed my body to go unwashed for extended periods of time, only to summarily have it soaked in a little zinc tub-thing when the itching became unbearable? Am I an interior designer in this life to atone for my lack of vision and innovation a couple of hundred years ago? My other personal conundrum is: "How could our civilization debacle from Roman Baths to outhouses, only in the last century rediscovering cleanliness?" And the biggest question for my contemporaries, still unanswered: "How come upper-middle-class American kids can come home from school with little unnameable creatures crawling on their scalps?" Which brings me to the last for today: "How far have we arrived?"