I Pissed My Pants But It Wasn’t Me
Blaming my wet jeans on the kid with dry shorts.
There are things we opt to forget. Some of those memories can be jostled back to the forefront by a sound or a person’s face or — in my case — a misaimed stream of urine.
In the fourth grade, I pissed myself during an assembly and blamed it on the kid behind me. It’s not sound logic, but it made a lot of sense at the time. Even with soaked Wranglers, I had the chutzpah to tell the Pope that they were dry but not enough to ask him to use the restroom.
I’ve told this story for years. Nearly twenty big ones have gone by and I can still smell the ammonia as if it were yesterday. Though elementary school crimes are expunged when you graduate to the next grade, I waited a while to admit the truth. Detachment and distance can morph you into a character rather than a character morphing into you.
I pissed my pants but it wasn’t me. It’s not a Socratic conundrum; it’s a blatant lie. What possessed me to rat out the boy with Tourette Syndrome? Easy targets don’t make accusations more justified. He had enough problems without me slinging blame.
Dustin had a unique tic. He’d frenetically flick his wrists outward as if he were unrolling his shirt sleeves and simultaneously utter one of the first three vowels of the alphabet. I knew two kids with this condition and I was blessed to have them both in my grade. When they were together, it bordered on operatic. But if there were to be a scapegoat, Dustin would be my man.
There are things from Krout Elementary that take up prime, mental real estate: the look of the lunch ladies and their perfectly rectangular pizzas, a comic strip outside the library with a frustrated man smashing his computer keyboard, the feel of Mrs. Burlile’s bottom when I poked it to ask her a question; the details get hazy as I age, yet one spark can start a fire, forcing me back into the urine-soaked shoes of a nervous fourth-grader. I’m not certain, but I have reason to believe I peed on my towel yesterday: my current wet spark.
After I rinse off in the shower, I dry my upper half as hot water continues to run down my backside. I dehydrate my moptop with the towel wrapped around my head, taking fashion tips from E.T. and an old Russian woman. Bundled wet hair clumps perched on my shoulders are akin to slithering leeches; showering would be great if it weren’t for the water.
At this juncture, I seize the opportunity to freely urinate. I’m basically blind without glasses. Where the stream takes itself is anyone’s guess. All I know is when I leapt out of the tub, the corner of my towel — previously parched — was darker than the surrounding area, and no longer thirsty.
Could it have been blind-sided by the showerhead? Sure. Could it have played Cross the Streams and lost? Also sure. I rinsed it then hung it up to air out before my next shower in two days, thus stamping my boarding pass on this particular train of thought. I track it until I arrive back at Krout Elementary; a towel corner soaked in piss is all it takes to get me there.
I’m in the gymnasium sitting [REDACTED]-style when I start to shiver. My arms form goosebumps because all bodily energy is rerouted to warm the contents of my bladder. Hundreds of classmates are fixated on Principal Ruffman; we are at his assembly. I don’t know what the assembly is about, nor do I care, for I am dealing with a significant amount of pee I’ve been holding in since lunch.
Assemblies were usually gratifying because they’d break up the monotony of public education. They’d often bring a third-party speaker in, like a firefighter or a woman posing as soccer superstar Mia Hamm. Today, neither Two-Way nor Stalo (pronounced “stay-low”) are clowning prestidigitators in the name of fire safety. It’s the principal and my brimming bladder in the spotlight.
My face is flush with sweat. The second hand on the clock — protected by a metal grate — is progressing in slow-motion. My insides are about to burst; they’re stretching to the point of infection and I’m losing my ability to concentrate. My ears ring at a level comparable to the school bell; if only it were that time. I’m Indiana Jones whenever he’s approached by a snake, except the fear is strictly internal; I can’t imagine my poker face is all that subtle.
I weigh the options. I could attract attention by asking Mrs. Deasley to use the restroom, or — and this sounds better by the second — I could piss right where I’m sitting. I’m scared to hold it in but I’m terrified to call for help. Rationale yields that I’ll get detention for this transgression: an arrest in the eyes of fourth-grade me.
What I decide will either fix my issue in a few minutes or grant me — still sounding good — immediate relief. The option I’m about to choose is clear from the status of my aforementioned Wranglers. The fear of rejection is playing a pivotal role in the decision-making process. If Mrs. Deasley denies my restroom request, I would have no choice but to let loose anyway. So I eliminate the middleman and go to town.
It’s happening. My eyes glaze over. There’s no stopping now. A calm sets in and I am liberated. I find myself sitting cross-legged with a post-pee clarity and soberness that I hadn’t experienced prior, one that makes me understand — in a profound sense — that I am the father of the puddle I am currently sitting in. I call him Shame.
When you’re in a liquid predicament like this, time is not linear: it shifts in mysterious ways. You travel to the past and to a future in which none of this happens; you are — or at least want to be — anywhere else but here: unconscious cosmic cruising. When the time-travel phase passes, I panic. I shift around like a dreidel at the end of its spin, soaking up the mess with cheap denim in a steady orbit.
The assembly concludes after a couple of eons and we are ushered out in single-file lines. I sit longer than my immediate classmates, absorbing all that I can like an oversaturated bread slice in salted olive oil. I stand and play the role of a detective who just stumbled upon a clue. I gesture at the pool a combination of the following: Are you seeing this? Who put this here? Dustin, was this you? What a weird thing to sit on!
They’re paying me the same amount of attention that Bruce Willis got in The Sixth Sense. I abandon the puddle wearing a pair of light-complexioned jeans that turned to the dark side.
There’s more in the chamber. The irony of the situation is that we pass by the restrooms on the way back to Mrs. Deasley’s. I have a split-second decision to make: risk ducking the line to finish the job in private or relieve myself in a more creative way. I’m full of piss and surprises today; I might as well keep my streak going. So, like a dog, I decide on the latter to further mark the expanse of my territory.
We get to class and everyone is on a high. It’s difficult to settle down after a visceral experience like an assembly. I am out of my body. My seat is about to get a golden shower and it has no idea; I’ve got a hunch. I need something, anything to get my mind off my bladder and my bladder off my mind.
I maintain eye contact with the pencil holder crevice at the top of my desk until I — for the second time today — pee in place, on command.
I’ve tried since. Even right now I’m trying and all I can get out is a dribble. Free will has been foiled by age.
In fourth grade, I thought the art teacher was seventy. She retired in 2017 which would make her a whopping eighty-three years old; though her obsolete hairstyle and aprons were probably doing her no favors, she was likely closer to forty.
When you’re that young, everyone is old in comparison; time has yet to bastardize and death is hardly a concept we’re attuned to. From elementary school alone, I count two teachers that are dead, one that’s retired, and the rest rapidly nearing the end of their tenure.
Years pass and details become fuzzier than Hendrix’s tone. You combine events, skew timelines, and caulk up the cracks to plump up an otherwise weak story. But the halls of Krout Elementary are so vivid in my memory.
The boy’s room stalls had curtains instead of doors. Dumping was but a theory. I couldn’t even pee if someone else was in the bathroom: quite the paradox, all things considered. I’d pretend to wash my hands until everyone left. He’s Russian, European, I’m Finnish.
And, of course, I.C.U.P.
Mrs. Deasley is impressed. Fourth graders traditionally have control over their bladders, but here I am stewing in urine. I am not another statistic. I am a singular force. I am breaking stereotypes. I fathered a companion puddle to the one I left in the gym. The pee droplets fall and echo off the cement walls of the classroom. My teacher looks at me with eyes that reflect a boy who just went through his personal Vietnam.
“Dustin did it,” I tell Mrs. Deasley in confidence. Dustin doesn’t sit remotely close. My alibi might’ve worked if anyone had listened to my cry for help in the gym, but, here, I’m caught wet-panted. I — a liar — am sent dripping down to the office.
I’m focused on what’s in front of me. I’m thinking nothing of the classroom behind and not of where I am going, but simply of where — and who — I am: the only kid in the hallway who pissed his pants. I left the class with a puddle; it’s their puddle now. I don’t care who’s taking care of it or if they have to send in the reserves to mop it up. How Mrs. Deasley diverts attention is peripheral. The lid is closed.
They are expecting my presence in the office. Mr. Ruffman — the assembly’s keynote speaker — asks what happened. I tell him the same porky I told Mrs. Deasley: someone else peed my pants. He whispers into the secretary’s ear; maybe they’re going to call Dustin to the stand to tell his side of the story. I agree; he should be here to defend himself.
Instead of legal proceedings, the secretary retrieves the Plastic Bin. I had only heard rumors of the Bin’s existence, but now I know the truth. She opens the holy relic. Ancient spirits evacuate, its bright aura leaks out and illuminates the room. Our faces nearly melt from the stale scent of generic detergent. These are the kinds of experiences that change people. Mr. Ruffman is protecting me from that. He shrugs off my denial and hands me the dreaded Light Gray Sweatpants from the Plastic Bin. I journey into a private restroom that feels a little like entering Narnia.
Even if they are a bit baggy, there’s something freeing about putting on clean sweats after donning twice-pissed pants. I double over the waistline and head back to class. It’s nice to be in a dry seat again. The day’s not over yet. Third time’s a charm, as they say. In hindsight, maybe light gray isn’t the color for me.
I pissed my pants because I feared the ask. I blamed someone else because I feared the guilt. I could’ve easily used the designated urinal; instead, I cosmically cruised to an alternative future in which I tell a different, more repulsive story, which convinces me to place urine where urine is not often found. And that’s the story I tell because that is the thing that I did.
I think I talked about it so much over the years because I wanted to forget it, to defuse its power over me. I don’t consider it trauma, though it was certainly traumatic.
Like a producer for This American Life, I sent my fourth-grade teacher an email to see if she remembered after nearly twenty years. I wanted to confirm that the incident wasn’t a decades-long fabrication. She responded a few hours later:
I do indeed remember the puddle under your chair in my room. I was embarrassed for you and tried not to make a big deal of your denial. I know now I must have handled it correctly and you are not scarred for life!
I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear from you. You have made my day knowing you have fond memories of fourth grade! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! And Jane is totally appropriate now!
They always remember the pissers.
Mrs. Deasley did not tell the class that I peed on that chair while sitting in it, though I’m pretty sure we locked eyes mid-stream. That is kindness incarnate. And a perk of sitting in the back row. It was great to hear from her regardless. I needed the validation.
A classmate misremembered, my parents didn’t remember one iota, yet my fourth-grade teacher did. Time is a weird thing. It moves mysteriously, converting tragedy into comedy and accidents into memories. Some things make the cut while others are left on the bathroom floor. Or the classroom’s. Or the gym’s.
Wherever he is, I hope Dustin is thankful that I covered for him all those years ago. He should also know that I think about him every time I see a puddle.
