The saddest embarrassing story to ever be described but not told, except towards the end, when it’s told.
August 13th, 2010 | by TJ |I don’t know if it’s the fact that I have so little going on right now, or that I’m feeling especially close to you lately, Internet, but last night I was struck by the urge to tell you about the last time I peed my pants.
I don’t think there’s too much in the way of embarrassing stories that I’ve ever really held back from you, Internet, but this is one that has been sitting around, untold, for almost two years now, I think. A long time.
I didn’t even tell Phil the whole story – the part that involved the PEEING – until maybe a year or more after it happened. Other than him, only two other people know. But one of those people is my sister, so I should probably say that other than him, only my cousin, my sister, and all of Scranton, Pennsylvania know this story.
Phil did know the rest of the story, though. I mean, there’s actual story about how I ended up peeing my pants, the most recent time I peed my pants. I keep saying “most recent,” as if there are several pants-peeing episodes between which I will need you to distinguish, but this is the only pants-peeing episode in my adult memory. I have to say “most recent,” because every chance she gets, my sister tells this story about how one time, we were playing Yahtzee, and she had a bunch of dice in the cup and shook them around. She had one hidden in her other hand. She held the cup of dice to her head and the pretended as though the hidden one had fallen THROUGH HER HEAD and into her hand.
And I peed my pants.
I was probably somewhere around 10, though my sister likes to increase the age every time she tells the story. If you ever meet her, and she tells you that last week she shook some dice through her head and I peed myself, she is lying to you.
Anyway, you basically know the gist of the story now. The punchline, if you will. I peed my pants. It was only a couple of years ago. Oh, ho ho, the hilarity.
So, if you already know that I peed my pants, why don’t I tell you the whole story? Well, Internet, it’s because I care about you. I don’t want to blindside you. You know, I tell you that I am about to regale you with an embarrassing story involving myself, and pee, and you go and get your popcorn and your soda and whatever other kind of snacky goodness people on the Internet claim to have when they’re watching something unfold, even though we all know you don’t really have any popcorn.
Anyway, so that would be you, all ready for my story, and you know me, so there would be a lot of gesticulation and such, leading up to the big finish, which, as we all already know, is pee. So you’d basically be on the edge of your seat, knowing what was coming the whole time, pretty much just waiting for “AND THEN I PEED MY PANTS!” to let loose the laughter that has been building up the whole time, because you’ve met me and/or seen my videos – I am a hilarious story teller.
Except, that’s not how it would go at all, because while this is a pants-peeing story, and stories about people peeing their pants – especially when the person themselves, the actual pee-er, is the one doing the telling – are always hilarious, this one was not especially hilarious.
I mean, ok, it is hilarious, because I peed my pants, and some of the circumstances surrounding the actual peeing are pretty funny. Funny in the way that embarrassing stories are, where every detail is a new layer of embarrassment until you yourself are cringing and half of your laughter is due to the hilarity of someone describing to you how they peed their pants and the other have of your laughter is relief that it wasn’t you.
Like someone telling you how their dress got caught in a car door and the dress got yanked away and they were in their underwear. Embarrassing.
So they ran into the first building they saw and it was a church and they ran right into the middle of a funeral somehow. Oh, man.
And then they tripped and fell and their boobies popped out of their bra and they landed in a heap like that (the person, not the boobies), in someone’s lap. Noooo!
And then? It turned out to be her father in law.
See? Every terrible detail makes it more and more hilarious. And the teller has usually reached some kind of fevered pitch of shrieking laughter herself at that point because what else are you going to do aside from laugh?
But not this story. Not my most recent pants-peeing story. It’s got all the necessary parts of a great story. There are pants. There is pee. There’s me. It sounds like it should add up to a perfect blog post, except NO. IT WOULDN’T.
I wrote a THOUSAND WORDS on shower pooves the other day, and here we are, talking about a story that involves pants, and pee, and me, and even I don’t find it funny. I find pooves funny. I don’t find this pee pants story funny. Embarrassing? Yes. But funny? Ok, yes, it’s a little funny. Because, come on. Pee.
But it’s only funny if you look at the inner core of the story. If I told you, “So there I was, in front of God, the world, and everyone, uncontrollably peeing my pants!,” you would totally laugh.
A story that ends with “UNCONTROLLABLY PEEING MY PANTS!” is pretty much a guaranteed winner, especially in the low brow circles in which this blog travels and associates.
However, it is when you begin to pull back from the slowly-spreading dark spot on my jeans, when you pull back and start to see all of the surrounding circumstances, that your laughter becomes less of “HAHAHAHA OH MY GOD YOU PEED!” and more of an uncertain, “Heh… heh heh… Uh… heh?”
Like if I tell you that it happened on my first day back to work (but not at work) after I was so sick a couple of years ago. A day that was one of the very, very few times I ever turned down the chance to babysit Mr. Noah, because I was still too weak and tired. Weak and tired from being so sick – a fever approaching 104 – that I actually called my mother to please come take care of me – even now she can tell you about how horrible she felt that she couldn’t come, that it was the first time ever in my life that I asked her to come to me.
I was so sick, I had laid in bed alternately moaning, crying and sleeping, with Law & Order: SVU playing 24 hours a day, streaming from Netflix. Just me and Elliot Stabler, waiting for my inevitable death.
And it was after that – after being so sick that my mom was devastated that she was unable to help, and Phil was feeling helpless from Arizona, because I was still in Maryland, and I had sweat through all of my clothes and developed a complex related to vomit basins and the like, a complex that leads me to tearfully beg Phil to promise me – PROMISE ME – that he will take away my bucket if I puke, because the saddest time in my whole life was when I was so sick and so alone that when I threw up in my designated bucket, I couldn’t do anything more than push it as far to the other side of the bed as I could, and I had to lay there, surely dying, in a bed with a bucket of my own ick.
People – you need a designated bucket-remover in your life. Trust me.
So anyway, that is not funny, that is sad. But maybe you’re thinking, oh, well, the PEEING happened when you were better – when you were going back to work. So maybe some funny can still be salvaged from this pee-scapade. I suppose after you get past the point where I was laying next to my own bucket, hallucinating that Detective Stabler had come to take me away to heaven, the story might be a little bit funny. Because people peeing their pants are funny.
And the circumstances of that specific day, the day of the actual wetting, do kind of mount into a hilarious frenzy, if taken a bit apart from the illness that lead to them.
I suppose, if you’re just cold-hearted enough to be able to separate the two, you just might squeeze a chuckle or two out of the whole thing. I do know, the two or so times I have actually told the story, the by the time I reach the “UNCONTROLLABLY PEEING MY PANTS” punchine, I had reached some kind of hysterical pitch, where I was trying to laugh, but was actually mostly crying from the horrible.
So, separate away the sickness, and my mom being so upset, and Phil being so helpless, and me and my bucket and Detective Stabler, and imagine, instead, me on my way to work, having taken my gut-twisting double strength antibiotic with some coffee and some tentative nibbles of plain, dry bagel.
So I’m tooling along – slowly, mind you, remember where I lived, just outside DC, making the ridiculous and ill-advised (in oh so many ways) commute from Montgomery County to Prince George’s County, on 270 and the DC beltway – making slow but steady progress as usual, in my little blue pregnant roller skate of a car, right near a split in the highway.
I was over to the far right, as I tend to be, but not at the side of the road, as the highway was splitting, so I was next to a cement barrier instead, with a poor excuse for a shoulder, when my stomach started to jump all around, like crawl up towards my lungs and kind of hunch up in a ball there. And then I had to swallow a lot of times.
You know, those ominous swallows? And you try to convince yourself that hey, no big, I’m just swallowing! Swallowing isn’t a big deal! I’m having a productive spit day or something!
But you really KNOW, deep down, that once the swallows start, it’s too late for you.
And I looked around in a panic, but traffic DOES. NOT. MOVE. with any kind of haste in the mornings on that commute, and that was normally no big deal, because I’d leave with plenty of time and have my coffee and my bagel and my CDs and my cigarettes and just get to work eventually, but this day, I was trapped between sporadically moving traffic and a cement barrier and being a violent puker who had, FOR ONCE IN MY ENTIRE STINKING LIFE, actually cleaned out my car, I had no choice, no receptacle, nothing to do except pull over as close to that little barrier as I could.
So I pulled over, and it’s not particularly safe, but it’s not terribly dangerous – traffic was not moving at all for one reason or another or NO reason, which is usually the case, and I hopped out of my car and I decided, in that split second, that I would run around the front end of my car and squeeze myself in between the car and the barrier and I would puke in as much privacy as you can get when you’re commuting on the beltway, because you know how people tell you not to be embarrassed about certain things because you will never see those people again? THE TRAFFIC WASN’T MOVING. Those people were going to be my puke-witnesses all the way to my exit, hence my plan to spare myself, and them.
Except, I couldn’t make it all the way around my extremely tiny car. My stomach made one final violent leap up my throat, just as I started to round the hood, and I slammed – SLAMMED – my right hand down on the hood of the car and bent right in half, and I threw up so violently, I peed my pants.
So there I was, in front of God, the world, THE BELTWAY and everybody, UNCONTROLLABLY PEEING MY PANTS.
By Aunt Becky on Aug 13, 2010
I’ve peed myself twice. THEN, I’ve gone to the hospital to confirm that I actually was, in fact, peeing my pants.
Nothing like having a string of doctors tell you that you’ve peed yourself. Twice.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Now that is a special kind of embarrassment, all off in a category of it’s own, with a picture of you as a header of the column.
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Aunt Becky Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Like a SADFACE picture. The SADDEST face. I’m totally with you on this.
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By Diane on Aug 13, 2010
Ack! I never used to be a peer (peeer? pee-er?)-when-throwing-up type of gal, but then I went and had me some kids. Of course, I didn’t find OUT that I was a peeer-when-throwing-up type of gal until the first time I had to throw up after having said children, which means I found myself there, on my bathroom floor, hunched over the toilet (as you do) coughing the ominous coughs that you just HOPE will end the suffering already, and as it all is happening, pee is just streaming down my legs. TJ, that was humiliating, and it happened in my own bathroom. I feel like the universe owes you 10 minutes trapped in an elevator with Colin Firth to make up for this injustice.
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M.Amanda Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Yup, post-baby I also became a pee-er-when-throwing-up girl. Thankfully, every time I’ve been sick enough to throw up, I’ve also felt bad enough to have stayed home. If you’ve got to pee your pants, it’s best in the privacy of your own home.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I think peeing your pants in your own home, while it does still hold some of the “I just peed my pants!” embarrassment, is more of an “oh darn!” than the “please let a hole open in the floor” feeling of doing it in public.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
I have spent most of the morning considering that elevator scenario.
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Ale Reply:
August 16th, 2010 at 8:14 am
At least your post baby peeing was when throwing up, you are at least already hopefully in the bathroom for that. I would fricking sneeze and niagara falls time. Sneezing waits for no bathroom and usually the only thing you hope for is a Kleenex.
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Emma Reply:
August 16th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I will now use that Colin Firth elevator thing as my requested reward for every good thing I do or everything bad thing I have to tolerate from here until eternity.
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By Shin Ae on Aug 13, 2010
Honestly? My vomit-phobia has kicked into high gear here, almost completely overshadowing the whole “pee” portion of the story. That sounds like some seriously awful sickness you had. I feel bad that you even have the memory of that sickness.
I have pee stories. I don’t find them embarrassing at all. Is that wrong? I would tell them, but I’m always the long commenter, and for once this one is a little bit short (-ish).
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
I don’t think it’s WRONG not to find pee stories embarrassing, but it’s definitely unique.
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Shin Ae Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I used to be very easily embarrassed. Then I had my kids. I don’t know just how or why it happened, but things changed after that.
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By Bre on Aug 13, 2010
I, unfortunately, am a violent puker that always results in peeing…leading me to hunch over the toilet while straddling a towel. Such a sad, sad scene requiring the designated bowl remover to also be a towel remover. Thank god he loves me because I don’t know if even I could do that.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
That is a good man right there.
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By Julie on Aug 13, 2010
Yepper, I’m a pee’er when puking after kids woman too. During chemo when puking became a daily or multiple times a day thing, my routine was to quickly pee then puke. If I couldn’t do that, I puked while peeing, into a trash can or whatever was handy. Really bad coughing spells will do it to me too. So see, you aren’t alone, women everywhere have peed themselves while puking! :)
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Oh, I’m so glad to know that the future holds more of this horrific embarrassment.
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By Becky on Aug 13, 2010
That is so sad. I agree with Diane; the universe definitely owes you big-time. I am fortunate enough to not have peed my pants in front of the entire beltway, but my friends used to find it HI-larious to tickle me until I cried, and there was a time or two that I got a little damp in the pants from that.
ps. Tickling someone until they cry &/or wet their pants is NOT FUNNY.
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By boomer on Aug 13, 2010
having to puke in front of rush hour traffic should result in a karmic dollar-off coupon of some sort.
having to putke in front of rush hour traffic and then peeing yourself deserves some kind of karmic platinum visa, with your name on the front but the bill gets sent to God.
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By thepsychobabble on Aug 13, 2010
I once got a ticket on a Marine Corps Base. I was pregnant at the time, and a sufferer of morning sickness. Incidentally, I peed my pants when throwing up on a nearly daily basis, but usually at home.
So I go to take care of this ticket. Sort of a mini-court. On the Marine Corps base. With lots of Marines. And we all had to get in a big line. I, of course, had already had my morning purge, so I should be good to go, right? Oh, no…after 2hours of line standage, I have to run to the bushes and throw up, in front of all these Marines. And wet my pants.
But since I was only 2 from the front of the line when this happened, I then had to go BACK in the building, and ask the nice Marines to please let my vomit/pee-smelly self back in line.
I sooooo feel your pain:(
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By Dr. Maureen on Aug 13, 2010
Gotta say, I didn’t even crack a smile, because that was not funny. Not funny at all. I’ve thrown up in public bathrooms and once on the sidewalk after a desperate attempt to walk home from the lab between vomit sessions, (I had to go in that day because I had a freaking job interview. I did not get the job.) and I found it terribly embarrassing. So I cannot even IMAGINE how you felt and it is horrible and not funny and you have my deepest sympathy.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
It wouldn’t have been so bad – well, still bad, but not SO bad – if traffic had been moving. Like people whizzing (oh god) by and maybe seeing me for a SECOND. But no. They all stayed there. While I got back in my car. And waited for someone to let me back in to traffic that wasn’t moving.
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By Julie on Aug 13, 2010
Close to term with my daughter, she decided it was a good idea to break the waters. Then she thought better of it and went back to sleep. So off I go to hospital with absolutely no signs of labour, and the doctor asks me “Are you sure you didn’t just pee yourself?”
FFS! Dude, I’ve been toilet trained for over THIRTY years, I think I’d know if I’d peed myself.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
AUNT BECKY WOULDN’T!
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By Mel on Aug 13, 2010
Oh no!!! Poor TJ. :(
Sadly, I have been there. Well, not there on the beltline, you know what I mean.
Like the other women mentioned earlier, with my first pregnancy I was very ill due to ‘morning’ sickness. (Which for me was every minute of every freaking day for months). Eventually, it finally subsided to make way for more fun pregnancy symptoms, until I got the flu at 8 months….at work. Luckily, my office was near the bathroom. I sprinted, as fast as my waddle would allow, and knew I had to think fast. I grabbed the garbage can and pulled it in the stall and quickly sat. I had defeated the pee in my pants inevitable!
Alas, I was not so lucky on my way home. I knew it was coming when I was stuck at an intersection turning left. I kept telling myself, if I can just make the turn, then that poor unsuspecting bank parking lot would be mine! I turned and entered the lot, but it was too late. I quickly tried rolling down the window or opening the door and my hands weren’t working! Every nook and crany in the door had vomit. And for being December in a Midwestern state – do have any idea how hard it is to clean frozen vomit out of every crevice in the car door and pee from the upholstery? Not fun.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
Ooooh my GOD. My “pull over on the BELTWAY” strategy was due almost totally to the fact that I cannot – CANNOT – clean up puke, even my own. Oh god. So awful!
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By kath on Aug 13, 2010
Oh my god, TJ. That is so awful. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
When I was about eight years old, I was at a neighbor’s house with a bunch of other kids. There was a long line for the bathroom, and of course the younger kids got to go first…and they were taking a REALLY LONG TIME…and I peed on the couch. Mortification complete.
There is also the time when I was about four or five when I (again) REALLY needed to go pee in the middle of morning services at church. My mother was the choir director and so I walked from my pew all the way to the front pew, where I gestured to her wildly until she came. I asked if I could go to the bathroom, she said no, and I couldn’t hold it. I peed. Right there in front of God and the congregation. I remember the pee went in a pee-river down the back corner of the pew, until it reached my mother, got her dress wet, and ooooh boy was she ever angry. I said in a voice that carried around the sanctuary BUT I TRIED TO HOLD IT! I COULDN’T.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Isn’t it awful how you can remember every single detail of every single pee-related humiliation FOREVER?
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By fuck yeah, motherhood! on Aug 13, 2010
Oh, man, Sisterhood of the Urinating Pants right here.
Love. Solidarity. A Change Of Clothes.
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TJ Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
People used to ask me all the time why I had so many clothes in my car. It USED to be because I am a chronic spiller.
NOT ANYMORE.
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By Wink on Aug 14, 2010
Oh.
The Universe most certainly needs to provide you with Colin Firth, Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey, Jr. In any order you please, for as long as you’d like. And hopefully they will all bring snacks. Then Black Hockey Jesus needs to write a post in your honor. Because, well…..If you survived that episode, didn’t throw yourself off the Cabin John Bridge, AND you then shared with the internets? Awesome braveryness.
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By A V Smythe on Aug 16, 2010
Hey all you pee-ers: just be glad you are able to pee, in your pants or elsewhere!
I haven’t peed since, oh…. 2004 or thereabouts, & have to spend 15 hours a week at dialysis
(which really sucks, let me tell you)
I’d be happy to pee uncontrollably in public, if I could, indeed, pee at all.
Treat your kidneys well, and please consider signing up to be a donor.
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By Rainyday on Aug 16, 2010
That was so almost me – though minus the public-ness and the extreme sick and all that other stuff. There were many a time during my morning sickness days when I came waaaay too close to sharting and/or whizzing my pants as I leaned over the bowl. Icky. Sorry it happened to you but thanks for sharing with us internetz!
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By f.s. on Aug 16, 2010
so to sum up, you peed yourself while puking in traffic one time.
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TJ Reply:
August 16th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Yes, but summing up isn’t my style.
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By ChroniclyRandom on Aug 16, 2010
I hope you get your peeing in public moment AV!! I have to say, I find it odd and unusual that you are chastising someone NOT because they peed their pants in an incredibly embarrassing fashion (much love to you TJ, I almost wet myself reading this story lol) but berating someone that they CAN pee….hmmm. seems odd to me and I’m ’bout as odd as can be!
That is all.
REformed anon girl
ChroniclyRandom
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By sister on Aug 17, 2010
i literally almost just PEED MYSELF reading the retelling of the yahtzee incident.
my GOD i am hilarious.
hey isn’t it going to be awesome when that ends up being my maid of honor speech?!
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By R on Feb 6, 2012
Glad you tweeted about this post.
I didn’t find you’re peeing pants story funny at all. Full sympathy!
I have quite a few lost control of bladder stories myself as I’ve had a hard time with UTIs. The last time I peed my pants I was volunteering at Petsmart. A kitten had thrown up on himself so I took him to the ladies’ room to get him clean. As you guessed I was struggling with a UTI at the time and the running water from the sink did NOT help. Suddenly I HAD TO GO RIGHT THEN. Abandoning the kitten on the sink and running to the stall behind me I knew I wouldn’t make it. I couldn’t even close the door because I was 1. worried about leaving the kitten so high up and 2. just trying to make it so some pee would end up in the toilet. The poor kitten jumped down/fell from the sink and joined me in the stall.
The only good thing about that experience (other than the kitten being ok) was that I was wearing an Always Infinity pad–because I was also on my period–and it absorbed EVERY. SINGLE. DROP. I could not stop thanking God for that miracle.
So my advice, if you happen to know in advance that you might pee your pants (UTI, peeing while puking, whatever) wear an Infinity pad.
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