Pregnant with a Urine Baby
Today’s the big day!  The day that I’ve been waiting excitedly for all winter, my first home high school track  meet.  Almost everyone I know from my small home town will probably be there to watch and I want to be able to feel good and  run my best out on that track to impress my friends, family and coaches.  Before any of my races I pretty much stick to a few strict rituals that I follow in an effort to prepare my body to race as fast as it can.  These rituals mainly include, having a pasta dinner the night before any race for the carbohydrate/energy benefit, Frequently doing sessions of deep breathing throughout the day to put myself in a calm and relaxed state, and another one is that I try to hydrate like crazy by drinking as much water as I can.  Therefore, as today is my meet day, I am making sure to participate in everything that I usually do to help set my body up for the race; especially on a hot day as today, drinking a lot of water.  I have a one liter sized water bottle that I carry around with me and frequently refill during my school day and so for today, I had already consumed almost five full liters of water by the time my last hour rolled around.

Now, everyone knows that drinking water makes you have to pee, so after drinking as much water as I did, and not making any trips to restroom yet that day, you couldn’t imagine just how badly I needed to pee. I tried to make a quick stop during the passing time before my last hour but ended up not having time because it would’ve made me late for my next class.  I just planned on asking my last hour teacher if I could go to the bathroom,  first thing when I walked through her door.  So, as I step into the classroom, with an aching bladder, I frantically search the room for my teacher.  As my eyes look all around the room, I notice that all of the desks have been differently arranged into long rows because of the standardized testing they had that morning.  I see my teacher all the way on the other side of the classroom talking to some strange older woman who I guess had visited our class.  I begin to try to make my way over to her by struggling to hurdle over about six of these rows of desks and without completely peeing myself in the process with the long strides I was taking to step over each row.  Although, before I could get to my teacher, she turns to the class and tells everyone to sit down and listen.  “Great,” I say under my breath.  All I want to do is just quickly use the restroom but it’s beginning to get difficult to do so.  My whole stomach is sore right now from the fullness of my bladder and it’s becoming unbearable.  My teacher then proceeds to say, “We have a special guest with us today class, she's from the senior center and she's going to talk to us today on how to interview a senior citizen about a historical event.  Now everyone be quiet and give her your full attention.” I honestly thought I was going to lose my mind when I heard this.  In a last ditch effort I tried to raise my hand in an attempt to attain my teacher’s attention. Unfortunately, it was no use.  She sat down in front of her computer and closed herself off from the class.  The old woman began her lecture.  I'm already a very shy person and so I wasn't about to interrupt this lady to ask to go to the bathroom.  I thought I'd try to just tough it out some more in hopes that she would be done speaking in maybe 10 minutes. The hands on the clock tick by slower than a drugged tortoise.  I felt like I was about to die.  My bladder was throbbing and my whole body hurt now. The pain was absolutely unfathomably awful; I wanted to vomit.  It was beginning to nearly paralyze me.  Now I've never cried in school before in my entire life, and I didn't want to break my streak now, but it was no use. I felt a warm tear trickle down my cheek and I could no longer hold back my stored up reaction to this agony.  No one could see me because I was in the back of the class which was good I guess because my break down was pretty embarrassing.  I started contemplating what I was gonna do; should I just pee my pants and accept the shame? Should I pretend to pass out? Should I just get up and run out? Now I was getting shortness of breath and was getting scared. Could I die from this? I thought. After about a half an hour the old woman seemed to be winding down her lesson and I was very eager to get out of that classroom. Right when the woman was about to walk away from the front of the room, my teacher then asks, “Barbara, I heard the senior center has gotten some new gardens, tell us about those!” After I heard this I almost screamed. I knew I wasn't going to make it. I had to make a bold decision. I staggered out of my seat into a standing position and just yelled at my teacher with a weakened voice, “I need to go to the bathroom right now.” My teacher saw that I was obviously in extreme distress from my swollen, wet, and red face. The whole class had their eyes on me. My teacher, looking pretty freaked out, squeaked out an, “okay!” Without any other thought I began to take my painful  steps towards the door. The class is still staring holes through me, but at this point I barely care, I'm just focused on survival.  I then sadly realize that I have to go on another hurdling adventure but I can barely walk at this point. I clumsily stumble through the dead silent classroom over the desk rows and then just throw my body weight into the door to open it. I basically fall out of the classroom and finally the door shuts behind me. People are walking through the hallway past me as I stagger like a pregnant gorilla, grunting, huffing, puffing. I finally make it to a bathroom and scurry in.  I don't even bother to close the stall door, I didn’t care anymore; I had already exceeded my daily embarrassment limit. I then try to allow my bladder to release but as I'm sitting down I begin to realize that I can't. My bladder isn't emptying. I can't pee. I'm now in full panic mode but before I start crying again I can feel my body beginning to release the urine and I take a sigh of relief. Although the feeling of relief didn't last long because I was still in an extreme amount of pain. My whole stomach was on fire.  Inevitably, I started crying again. I was thinking about my race that was soon and worrying if this horrible torment in my lower section would have a negative impact on my performance.  After I had peed everything out, I decided to head back to class and face the aftermath of my embarrassing scene.  I got to the class and everyone of course looked at me and I just wallowed in the walk of shame over to my sad little desk in the far back corner. I just looked down and did my work without a glance up at all.  That night after school at my meet I was very concerned that I would not run as fast due to the still lingering pain in my bladder but to my surprise it was the opposite. I actually ran a personal record that day and won most of my races. It ended up being okay thanks to me deciding to save myself by speaking out in class asking to go to the bathroom instead of just sitting and continuing to suffer.  If I had chosen not to speak out, I probably would've been worse off and possibly more hurt.