The title is your only warning.

Apparently some people have legit phobias of public restrooms, I feel for them I really do because some of us can’t afford to have those sorts of phobias. Not without going all in and embracing the diaper life.

I started this confession at the tender age of 17, but it goes much farther than that. My first memory of public bathroom humiliation came much earlier. How old was I? 9? Possibly 8. But the sisters were going to Branson and I wanted to go, I wanted to be part of the group. Only after lunch, my stomach rebelled. And public toilets apparently were taking the day off in Arkansas. So there I was in need of new clothes and definitely old enough to be utterly humiliated. I got a sweet new unicorn shirt out of it though so that was the first and sadly last time I benefited from having terrible bladder control.

Let’s go back to 17.

Here is the story. The one. I like to think they don’t get better or, worse, but they do. This remains my favorite and one of the few I can publicly tell.

I was 17 and sitting in the passenger seat of my husband’s car. We were deep in the wilds of Washington County Maine. I was roughly 10 months pregnant and happily chatting nonsense. 17-year-olds chat a lot of nonsense. So do 36-year-olds.

Anyway. The Demon I was gestating kicked me full force in the bladder, think Jackie Chan on steroids, and that was that. I needed to pee like I had never needed to pee in my life. And we were in the middle of freaking NOWHERE. The obvious answer to me now would be, pull over, pee in a ditch. Move on with my life. Nope. I still had standards then. I wasn’t peeing in a ditch. I was better than that. So Joff began to desperately look for a gas station, a house, a construction site with a porta-potty.

Those were terrible times. I died and came back to excruciating life again and again.

And then.

There it was.

The miracle I had fervently prayed for and offered up my firstborn too (she was a demon martial arts expert after all).

An ancient gas station, with a long deck filled with ancient crones and geezers rocking away in their rocking chairs, jaws working dentures in wrinkled mouths, eyes sharp and suspicious. But also. A restroom. An old-timey outhouse.

I had loosened my sweats in some absurd play for relief.

So I was ready.

I leaped from the slowing car. imagine it in slow motion. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

And I landed, but not on my feet, no I rolled the few inches to the deck of rocking octogenarians pants around my ankles, thong hiding nothing.

Stumbling to my feet with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, I held my sweat pants up and jerked my chin to the restroom and one, the leader, said “yup”. I hobbled. It was too late, but I hobbled anyway.

And once the door was fixed they erupted. Cackling and howling and slapping their knees.  I almost decided to fix up the outhouse, evict the spiders, put up curtains. NEVER LEAVE EVER.

But my husband came and told me there was no way the two of us could fit in there and my midwife wouldn’t make (out)house calls to the middle of nowhere. So I had to leave.

And I did.

Pants ruined, pride gone, all covered in dirt.

But at least I could breathe again.

The new sweats and tee-shirt I got were national guard hand me downs from my husband.

I learned a valuable lesson that day.

The ditch is the best place for an emergency pee.

Unless there is a critter in the way, but thats a story for another day.