Brothers Are We

Are you familiar with the phrase, ‘It Sucks to Be Me’? What follows is funny only if you are not me. In the ordered world we live in, that is ALL of you. Carry on, but please retain some degree of sympathy for the one person in the world that is actually me.

When I travel without BEG to an out of town track event that lasts no more than two days, I pack light. I pack so that I have one carry-on small suitcase. If BEG goes, she’s taking half the house and we are checking luggage so I may as well take more too. But when traveling alone, I dress in one set of clothes and I put my track gear and competition clothes and toiletries in a hyper small suitcase. I will only wear the clothes half the time I’m away, the majority of the time I will be at the track venue in track clothes anyway.

So last Friday morning I dressed in a black silk long sleeve mock turtleneck and pressed blue jeans. I also had a light jacket vest (black) that was not needed in Texas but was necessary in Boston. On my feet were tan slip-on Arnold Palmer loafers. I looked good, eh? At my side was the small suitcase the brown-eyed girl had tried to separate from me earlier. Barney Fife had released me on my own recognizance.

I retrieved my boarding pass from the e-ticket machine and then sat at the gate reading for an hour and a half. Remember BEG dropped me off early? Ten minutes before the time shown for boarding the plane I went to the men’s room. I’m sort of a micro-planner. I wait until boarding time is near to go pee so I don’t have to go on the plane. Because I waited, I really HAD TO GO; full pee load on board.

When I turned the corner of the men’s room I saw all the urinals were occupied. I went for a stall. I rolled the suitcase in behind me, closed the door, unbuttoned and zipped down the fly of my jeans. I reached in for the man part and pulled Sleepy free. That’s right, all us men name our penis. My part is aka ‘Sleepy’. Too much info? The thing is that a penis is always in the dark. It only has two functions. If you think about it a penis spends most of its life in the dark hanging around and doing absolutely nothing. So I figure they do a lot of sleeping. I would if I were a penis. Sleepy seemed like an appropriate name to me. Some guys go for Big Jake or The Big Boy, which seems grandiose and even fantastical to me. I like the understated ‘Sleepy’.

So as I was saying, I pulled Sleepy out of bed and aimed him at the big bowl. It was time for him to do one of his infrequent tasks, the lazy slob. For you women that have not been around men, we typically hold our man hose in one hand and the other hand holds the pants slightly aside. I know you can see this in your mind’s eye. All you guys know I’m right. That was my position as a full stream of saved up pee splashed into the porcelain and water below. A second or two after commencing, my cell phone rang. It was in the pocket of my ‘carpenter style’ jeans on the outside of my right leg about mid-thigh down.

I could still aim Sleepy with my left hand and reach down with my right hand, but that meant I would have to open the phone with one hand, push the talk button and hold the phone to my right ear. That seemed very awkward to me. I devised a workaround on the spur of the moment. I retrieved the phone with my right hand by slightly squatting and reaching down while continuing to hold my best friend with the left. Since I was in a stall with the door closed I pushed my jeans downward enough to create a safe trajectory for the stream, exposing half my rear, but it freed my left hand (Sleepy was peeing solo at this point). I used the now unoccupied left hand to transfer the phone to my customary listening ear on the left.

I said hello, maybe the only normal thing that was to follow. It was a teammate calling from Houston. He had a horrific story to tell about one of our teammate’s car catching on fire at Houston Intercontinental Airport. This story he was telling me is worth telling you, but I’m only going to tell one story at a time since I’m not a skilled novelist. But believe me it was one of those “Are you shittin me!” kinds of stories. I was totally absorbed by the story of the fire in Houston, but I could also feel my pants starting to slip farther down. I instinctively retrieved them a little higher while I listened. Totally amazed by my comrades story I continued to pee and listen. Then I felt something warm on my right leg. I looked down. Sleepy was no longer aimed at the bowl.

When I had pulled my pants a little higher during the phone conversation I had pulled the fly to a position high enough where I was peeing half into the bowl and half into my jeans. I adjusted in a split second. I told my friend I had to go. No, really GOODBYE, I’ll see you in Boston.

I finished. I pulled up my jeans. From the crotch, where the trajectory had been aimed, to just above the right knee they were soaking wet!

I had accidentally peed my pants! These were the only pants in my possession. It was approximately 3 minutes until boarding time. In the stall stood a grown man with peed pants. He owned a ticket to Boston for a flight that was scheduled to leave in minutes.

I assessed my options.
1. Go to Boston on a totally full flight with peed pants.
2. Don’t go to Boston.
3. Tear the bathroom to pieces in a fit of rage.
4. Accuse someone else of wetting my pants.
5. Take off my pants and soak the whole thing in the lavatory and declare my dryer at home is broken.
6. Have a brain hemorrhage.
7. Put on my track clothes and fly to Boston looking like a semi-retard.
The track clothes I had packed looked a lot like this gents.

I chose option 7. I heard the boarding announcement for my flight over the restroom intercom. I opened the suitcase and rifled through the contents in a near panic. The confines of the stall were not helpful. I found the running gear. I took off all the other clothes. Have you ever been standing totally naked in a toilet stall at the airport? It’s very weird. Even reality TV can’t invent my life. Sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes.

I put on the running clothes. I re-considered not going to Boston. I wondered how to explain to teammates that I couldn’t come to Boston because I peed my pants. I hurried faster, my elbows banging against the sides of the stall. I smushed all the clothes, yes including the jeans, into the suitcase that was not designed to carry that much. It bulged like it was going to have baby suitcases. I tied my running shoes and hit the men’s room door in a light trot. The suitcase was tucked under my arm like a gigantic square football.

I was the last person to reach the jetway entrance. The gate agent took my pass and gave me a ‘twice–over’. She asked if everything was alright? I said, oh yes, most certainly. I pretended people fly everyday wearing track clothes. What does she know anyway, she only stands at the boarding line each day.

The last man on the plane walks down the aisle with a pregnant suitcase wearing the clothes of a man who appears to want to challenge other passengers to a race on board the plane. What the hell, its a long flight. Every face on the plane searches mine for a clue to my secret. I gave them the biggest and sunniest actor’s smile I could summon. Of course right now I have a mouth full of braces. I think I looked a lot like Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger as I smiled my way down the aisle to the only seat left on the plane.

I squeezed into the middle seat next to a young mother holding an 8 month old baby boy named Evan. On the way to Boston, Evan and I became best of friends. After all, we have some things in common. We have man tools. We pee in our pants. Brothers are we.