As many of you may or may not know, I have an obsession with pee. It’s weird to some people, but it’s the topic about much of what I write, most of which will never see the light of day. I’ve written cookbooks about it, poems, songs, and epics the likes of which would impress Homer. I wrote a sonnet praising Patches O’Houlihan, the mentor from the cult classic Dodgeball, for coming out about his love of drinking urine. It’s time to come out of the woodwork and share my story.
I’m fluent in two languages: sarcasm and pig Latin. I’d say English, but ask the people who edit this and they’ll tell you I’ve probably never read a book in my life, nor have I ever attended a lecture on grammar or the proper use of either/or and neither/nor. My fluency in sarcasm comes from two very special people in my life, my mom and her sister. They were raised to be fluent in sarcasm, as were my brother and I, and our respective children will probably fluent as well. Normally we poke fun at each other to make ourselves smile and laugh and pass the time, but every now and then it gets out of hand.
When I was very young and first learning sarcasm, I also learned how to use the toilet. I was impressionable and naïve; I assumed everyone told the truth and nobody ever lied. My aunt made a harmless joke, “If you pee standing up a hand will reach out of the toilet and grab you.” Most people could recognize this as just a harmless joke. Everyone knows disembodied hands can’t fit through a drain pipe in the toilet. Even if they could, their populations have approached near zero ever since the introduction of the sewer gator into the sewer’s ecosystem in the early 1990s. Which, everyone knows, are the natural predators of disembodied hands. The hands, as the old rumor goes, were responsible for the Lindbergh baby’s disappearance which sparked the long standing debate over the benefits of the Gator Introduction Initiative, GII for short. GII was finally passed under the Clinton administration, and the hand populations have declined ever since.
Anyways, the thought that sewer hands might actually exist absolutely terrified me. I decided that I wouldn’t take the risk of peeing standing up in the bathroom. I was a very outdoorsy child, and around the same time I had learned that it was acceptable to pee on a tree if you really had to go and there were no restrooms around. I was so terrified that I would go out to our backyard and pee on a tree rather than risk an encounter with a disembodied toilet hand. I thought I was very clever. We had a large privacy fence in our tiny backyard to keep our dog in so my parents thought, what’s the harm? He’ll never do this in public, he hates public restrooms, he’ll learn eventually.
About a month later my strange fear still persisted. I was still continuing my new habit. One Sunday my parents took me out to visit my grandparents. The drive from the west side of Cleveland to the east side isn’t a particularly long drive, nor is it particularly interesting, aside from Dead Man’s curve and the whale mural I was fascinated with as a child, that is now burned into my adult mind (Pro Tip: take a child in a car along a section of highway called Dead Man’s Curve). For a 5 year old it’s the longest 45 minutes of his life. Especially when you drink a lot of water. When we arrived at my grandparents’ house. They immediately wanted to take us to a park. I was so excited I forgot to announce my urgent need to pee and decided it would be better to go play.
They took us to a park that was probably a 10-minute walk from their house, with a public restroom, some playground equipment, and a few good trees. After a minute on the swing panic set in. I had to go. As I approached the restroom my flight or fight response kicked in and I remembered the words my aunt had said to me: “If you pee standing up a hand will reach out of the toilet and grab you.” Not wanting to go back to my grandparents’ house because of the hands, or the park restroom (you know how I feel about public restrooms). I panicked. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t possibly walk the ten minutes to my grandparents’ house by myself. I couldn’t ask for help either. I did the only thing I could do.
Right by the street there was a tree. It wasn’t particularly large or special. It was a rather young and skinny tree much like me. If you were to hide behind it wouldn’t provide much cover and leave you more or less exposed to anyone. If you were to urinate on it, the tree was young enough that it would probably die. It was perfect. I dropped my pants and Spiderman™ tighty-whities around my ankles, pulled my t-shirt up above my nipples and let the stream fly. Of all the ways to mortify your parents that pretty much takes the cake. Not only is it embarrassing that your kid is afraid to use the toilet, but to use the bathroom he basically strips naked. It was a park in a residential neighborhood so I’m sure someone across the street probably saw me. Out of context you’d probably think it’s cute. It would be a pretty candid “Hahaha look it’s a little boy doing little boy things.” For relatively young parents, a virtually naked child in Euclid, OH might be a little jarring.
That’s when this officially became a problem. My parents decided that they would dispel the rumor about the hands and made sure I could use the bathroom like everyone else. That’s why I’m a little obsessed with pee. Maybe that’s why I get a little nervous every time I have to go in public. Maybe that’s the reason why I’m so vehemently opposed to free public restrooms. The government is probably lying; toilet hands are real. They are not extinct. They will probably make a move to grab you when you least expect it. But that’s okay. Sometimes the only way to face your fear is to pee on it.
-Adam Hribar, Staff Member