But you can actually make yourself feel a whole lot better about your life today merely by reminding yourself of a few key things. For instance, just a few centuries ago ...

Hollywood is good at making the past look like a brutal, violent place -- every medieval adventure features several hundred dudes getting stabbed -- but it also makes it look kind of awesome. The cast of Gladiator and Braveheart appear to live noble, meaningful lives, and there's a reason that nerds like to gather in the park dressed like knights and maidens. It's like the world back then was more real. None of this cubicle bullshit.

5 Pooping Was A Never-Ending Horror Show

Andreas F. Borchert

What's the worst thing you've ever found in a toilet? An errant turd on the seat? A giant spider? Open flames?

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What, no open flames? Congratulations! You didn't have to endure the horrors of a Roman toilet. They were damp and awful stone closets that opened directly into horrid cloacas that were teeming with the kind of life that enjoys poop-rivers (and is not averse to taking an occasional bite out of a succulent ass cheek, should one position itself conveniently).

Presse03/Wikimedia

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The average Roman had three assholes.

Also, your butt might literally catch fire, what with rampant methane fumes that could very well result in flames erupting over your delicate taint. The Romans scribbled magical incantations on the walls of lavatories to keep the ass demons they blamed this all on at bay, and some bathrooms featured the image of Fortuna, the goddess of luck, to reflect the crapshoot nature of ancient crapping. And then the Middle Ages came along, and things got much worse.

As medieval populations grew and people began living in closer and closer quarters, dealing with all the inevitable excrement started to become a huge problem. Because medieval folks were equipped with the same noses as we are and, as such, weren't too fond of spending their lives as Acting Mayors of their personal Poopville, this sometimes led to some fairly inspired tinkering. For instance, people dug cesspits in their backyards, which often spilled over into neighbors' properties and caused a nightmare for the era's court system. An Englishwoman named Alice Wade managed to MacGyver together a wooden pipe system that ran underneath several of her neighbors' houses and dumped her droppings into a street. This was pretty ingenious unless you a) used the street, like, ever, or b) were one of the aforementioned neighbors when the pipe inevitably clogged and started stinking up the entire area.

BBC

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Say what you will about your neighbors; they never took you to court over taco night.