W: 12/04/02

Work Diary, 12/04/02

I am so appalled.

Last night, I found myself trapped in a traffic jam. As luck would have
it, I had to pee - really pee, as in grimacing-oh-god-I'm-gonna-burst
pee. My drive home is fifteen miles of highway; pulling off to use some
restaurant's facilities would add a good twenty minutes to my commute.
Anyway, I couldn't get over to an exit.

So. Frantically, I looked around my car, the floor of which is littered
with plastic Diet Pepsi bottles. Necessity being the mother of
invention and all, I grabbed one of the bottles, popped its top, and
stared woefully at the tiny opening. I'm not in the business of
sticking my privates in Pepsi bottles, but even in the dim light I
could tell the opening was wholly inadequate. It would be like trying
to shove my arm down the kitchen faucet.

My bladder begin screaming. Soon it would become like some trapped
animal, frantic and capable of anything to secure its release. I looked
to my left, then my right, but the highway is under construction, and
the breakdown lanes have all been taken over by concrete barriers that,
quite frankly, I couldn't help but view with paranoid suspicion. Those
barriers were there for one reason only: to keep me from pulling over
so I could do my business. Bastards.

Mother Necessity was still with me, however. My key chain is a
pocketknife, given to me by a friend who was about to become a saint in
my book. Naturally, traffic was at a crawl; I couldn't turn off my car.
So, with one hand holding my keys, and the other through the steering
wheel, I managed to twist the knife off the key chain. I swerved a bit,
and knocked the wiper control on, but I had the knife.

Quickly, I cut a bigger opening in the Pepsi bottle. At that point, I
didn't care about the castratingly sharp plastic edges or the truck
drivers who could easily have peered down to see what I was doing. I
had a toilet and I knew how to use it.

It gets worse, of course. I couldn't put the cap back on the mangled
bottle as it wouldn't have made any difference. Pouring the contents
out my window would almost certainly have left most of it on the side
of my car. That left the cup holder, which is conveniently located
directly in front of my heating vents. Did I mention it was freezing
outside? And that my heater was going full blast? I put the bottle in
the cup holder and spent the next forty-five minutes literally trying
not to stew in my own juices.

Once, on a fishing trip with my father, my sister and I sat in the back
seat of the car while it rained. Our father sat in front. I was already
disgusted with him after he'd happily decapitated a baby hammerhead
shark my sister had pulled from the Gulf. The rain was one of those
torrential Texan things - no rainy clich? could describe it. "God's
crying buckets," our father said, then giggled drunkenly. He was right,
but I sneered at his joke anyway.

"Now, here's why you never throw away your bottles," he said next. My
sister and I gaped as we heard his zipper go down, a sound that was
immediately followed by the reek of urine. He was peeing in a bottle,
smug as could be, while trapped in a car.

Lord. Who would have known that twenty-six years later, I would have my
first bonding experience with my father?