Wednesday was different, in at least, that I didn’t run into Bertha and the others, but luck wasn’t totally on my side that day. On the way to fifth period I felt like I needed to pee I knew that I wouldn’t have time to pee and go to my locker too so I made the decision, that I didn’t need to pee that badly and that I could hold it until after fifth period was over. I was so wrong.
Ten minutes into class and the urge to pee had become a full-fledged emergency. Fifteen minutes in and the need had passed the emergency stage and moved on a blinding pain of Biblical proportions!
“Please open your books to the questions at the end of chapter two. And who would like to give me the answer to question one?” our teacher had asked.
I hadn’t really heard what she said, because I had to pee so desperately; so when I raised my hand to ask if I could go to the bathroom, I was caught off guard, when she called on me for the answer.
“Alvin, good! I don’t think we’ve heard from you yet this year. What do you think the answer is?” she said.
“What? Uh, I don’t know. I-I need to go to the bathroom!” I said and everyone laughed; everyone except for our teacher and me.
Thankfully, she read in my face how painfully urgent it was, because she didn’t give me a hard time about it. She simply held out the bathroom pass and waited for me to come get it. The pass was a large piece of wood, with ocean green painted letters, which read BATHROOM PASS on both sides.
Everyone was still giggling as I did the pee-pee walk up to the front of the room, but I didn’t care. Well actually, I did care, but my need to pee canceled out my embarrassment. I grabbed the pass, race-walked out the door and started down the hallway toward the boys’ bathroom.
Oh man, that was the longest walk from the classroom to the bathroom. I was scared that I wasn’t going to make it to the door let alone inside. However I did make it to the door, but when I swung open the bathroom door, I ran face first into a wall of cigarette smoke. I’ve been around school bathrooms enough to know, that they are not just used for peeing and pooping. With that being said, on that day, at that very moment in time, I had one thing, and one thing only, on my mind and it wasn’t boys smoking in the bathroom! Therefore, when that smoke slapped me in the face, I hadn’t been expecting it. I coughed only once and then it happened. It was like someone had just blew-up the Hoover Dam and released the zillions of gallons of water that it had held back for all those years. My bladder suddenly let loose a torrent of pee into my pants that would have made the Colorado River look like a backyard garden hose.