Peeing, life’s most underappreciated bodily function.

You know what I miss?

Not a trick question.  The answer is in the title of the post.

I miss peeing.  More specifically, I miss peeing at a leisurely pace where I kind of just let the pee flow out of me at its own natural rate, rather than the peeing I do now which involves me using every single muscle in my urinary tract to force the pee out of my body in a gushing wave as quickly as possible.

This is not at all where I imagined this post going.  I apologize.  Honestly, it could be worse.

There was a period in the past where peeing was kind of a nice thing to do.  I’d casually look at a magazine, check my phone, hum a tune or maybe even whistle.

I’m kind of showing my dweeb here, aren’t I?  My two closest friends probably don’t whistle while they pee.  My one friend is ultra-cool.  She has cool clothes and listens to cool music by bands I’ve never heard of.  She’d stop hanging out with me if she saw the stuff on my iPod.  You cannot be cool while listening to Hall & Oates and Air Supply.

Shut up.

My other friend is a whack-job like me, but she hides it behind an air of sophistication.  She’s like Audrey Hepburn on the outside and a psych ward patient on the inside.  It’s kind of an awesome combination.

Unlike Audrey Hepburn, I’m not able to successfully mask my crazy so I’m more like a psych ward patient on the inside and Lewis Black on the outside.

Sexy, I know.

As usual, the above 8 paragraphs have nothing to do with this post.

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I no longer have the luxury of peeing at my leisure.  I mentioned in the past how my all-too-human need to empty my bladder caused me to have to call Poison Control.  And really, I imagine that this is the same for every mom on the planet.  Casual peeing is really a childless woman’s game.  Now, peeing is only done on an absolutely as-needed basis and it’s usually saved for naptime or bedtime or those instances where you can feel your bladder attempting to leave your body by turning itself inside out so that it can be expelled through your urethra.

(I’m pretty sure my anatomy and physiology is incorrect.  I dropped out of A&P after one week, so I have no idea where your bladder would leave your body if it decided to do so and I do not care enough to Google it.)

This past week I had the joy of peeing in the bathroom at The Beast’s dentist office.

Let me say, you’d be blown away if you saw The Beast in a dental chair.  He’s suddenly the most obedient and well-behaved child on the planet.  He lets the hygienist polish and floss his teeth without complaint.  He lets the dentist poke his mouth with the dental poker.  (I used to work in a dental office.  “Dental poker” is the actual technical term.  Don’t Google it.)

On Wednesday, after paying for The Beast’s cleaning, I had to pee.  Normally I do not pee in public.  Surprisingly, this is not because of a fear of public toilets, although if I did a little research I could probably freak myself out enough never to allow my tush to touch a toilet seat again.

It really just has to do with logistics.  If I’m sitting on the toilet, what will The Beast do?  I can’t very well leave him with a stranger.  If I take him into a bathroom stall with me, he’ll likely crawl on the floor and peek into the stall of the person next to me.

That actually happened to me once.  I was peeing in the bathroom in Target when a little head peeked under the wall between the stalls and greeted me.  And because I’m ridiculously nice, I acted like it was totally okay that this child was watching me pee.  I didn’t scream.  I didn’t say, “Ma’am, your son is freaking me out a little.”  I just pretended like people watch me pee all the time.

Anyway, if I opted to pee in a public bathroom, The Beast would undoubtedly end up on the floor.  I do not think there’s enough disinfectant in the world to get public bathroom germs off of a child.  In fact, there was an episode of CSI where a child died after crawling on a bathroom floor and the medical examiner put “Bathroom Germs” as the cause of death.  (True story.  Don’t Google it.)

However, at the dentist’s office on Wednesday, I really had to go.  I figured that it would be relatively safe.  The bathroom was just like a bathroom that you’d have in your house.  There were no stalls that would invite a crawling expedition, so I felt like I could safely take him in with me.

So we went into the bathroom and I started to pee.  The Beast decided he’d like to climb up onto the sink. We had a brief argument about not climbing onto fixtures.  He decided that if he wasn’t going to be permitted to climb on the sink, then he was quite done with this bathroom, so he walked to the door and started to unlock it.

As it turns out, I was in the “gush” phase of the pee.  Being nearly 40, my ability to stop my urine flow isn’t quite as exact as it used to be.  But if I didn’t remove my body from the toilet and stop The Beast from leaving the room, he was going to open the door and expose me to the entire dental office.

So I made a very quick choice to dive off of the toilet and physically stop him from unlocking the door.  And in the process, I peed all over the dentist’s bathroom floor.

(Virginia Slims Man is going to have a hard time keeping his hands off of me after reading this post.)

I yelled at The Beast that he was not permitted to unlock the door, and then I cleaned up my pee.

Audrey Hepburn would never pee on the floor.

So, I’ve reached the point in my post where I try to come up with a moral to my story.  A nugget of wisdom.  A dingleberry of truth.

There’s the obvious: Don’t take for granted the ability to peacefully enjoy your bodily functions.

But maybe slightly less obvious: If you gush before you flush, don’t be a boar; wipe up the floor.

P.S.  I’m writing a book of poetry.  I’m pretty sure, based on the above sample, that it’s going to rock.

Like Air Supply.