Caution: Sexual Content

Have you ever been awakened by the need to pee?  If you are a man over fifty (or maybe forty) you can surely relate to this.  It does become a challenge as one ages to make it to dawn without at least one trip to the commode.  You don’t turn on the lights, even if you are in an unfamiliar environment (say, a hotel).  On reaching the royal throne a seated position is taken and you wait; the length of time seems relative to ones age.  And while you are there you try very hard not to think.  Because thinking generates alpha wave activity in the brain and alpha waves keep one awake.

As you sit, waiting either for the event to begin or finish, enveloped in a cocoon of darkness, barely able to keep from sliding off the toilet seat, the lights of a passing car stray across your window (if you do not have a window in your bathroom, this whole story is moot, but I digress) and your first thought, especially if you have ever been employed in a hazardous occupation, is, “Who the hell is driving in my neighborhood at three o’clock in the morning?”

If you have never worked in a hazardous occupation, you probably fart, snort, scratch and go back to bed.  These people are much more likely to die unexpectedly at the hands of others. 

There are only three types of people who drive around residential neighborhoods at three o’clock in the morning: doughnut cooks, peace officers, and criminals.  Which one has just invaded your stupor?

At this point, ones brain kicks into survival mode and you become an animal of the forest.  The senses of smell and hearing take over.  Hearing is damned near useless because all your ears can discern is your urine flow (or dribble) splashing off of the water in the toilet bowl.  Even though it is a natural reaction, holding ones breath does not help as eventually you gasp for air creating more unwanted ambient noise.

Forget smell:  all you get is wafts of garlic, courtesy the pepperoni pizza you had for dinner commandeering your kidney function.  Besides, due to the evolutionary development of sight as the primary survival sense in humans, we do not possess the olfactory keenness necessary to distinguish cop from a crook.

Eventually, as part of fight or flight, your bladder and urethra conspire to stop the flow.  Nobody wants to pee on their ankles.  Now you can hear, but you're pissed (no pun intended, but pretty damned good if I say so myself… it seems that a great many of my humorous thoughts are not intended, but I digress) because you know that you’re going to have to finish this process in an hour or so. 

After due time, coincidentally about the time it takes for your legs to fall asleep, you decide that there is no clear and present danger and stumble back to bed to enjoy the rest of your night’s sleep… or you would if you could stop thinking about that teaspoon of urine still sitting in you bladder.

Now you’re thinking to yourself, “Dale, what about the sexual content?”  C’mon, would you have read this missive if I’d titled it, “Peeing in the Dark”?

By the way, my g-mail address is daleholbrookoutwest@gmail.com