Bathroom Adventures, part 1

The more I get into blogging, the more I find myself keeping an eye out for anything in life that's worth writing about. Sometimes it's the little things, like the wedding ring blog, that inspire me. Other times, inspiration comes in the form of an 18 year old wrestler trying to beat the crap out of me.

Unfortunately, this past week, my inspiration came to me in the bathroom where I had mishaps, not one, but two times.

Bathroom Mishap #1

I have the world's smallest bladder. Traveling with me is a huge inconvenience. However, because God has a sense of humor, He also saw fit to bless me with a high metabolism and a nearly unquenchable thirst. It's a vicious cycle. I drink constantly, but the stuff goes through me at record speed ending up at my bladder which has a permanent No Vacancy sign up.

Well, lately, I've developed a habit. I grab a coke as I'm leaving work and drink it on the ride home. I have a fairly long commute, 30 miles or so, which means it takes me about an hour and fifteen minutes to drive home. This, as far as I can tell, is EXACTLY how long it takes for a coca-cola to work it's way through my digestive system and start pummeling my bladder to death. (I feel the urge by 30 minutes, but I'm crossing my legs by the one hour mark.)

So on Thursday, I grabbed my coke and left work. Instead of going home, I had to pick up my oldest son from Tae Kwon Do that day. I left at 5:00 though, and his class ended at 6:30, so I should have had plenty of time.

Only, as I tried to leave the office park, something was obviously wrong. The cars were backed up for a half mile. I'd seen this before, and I knew that if I sat in this line, I was going to be late picking up my son, so I made a u-turn and headed for the back entrance.

No luck, this one is worse than the front entrance. Crap! Well, nothing to do but sit and wait.

So I waited...and waited...and waited. It took me 37 minutes to get out of the complex and onto 141 where the cause for the traffic became apparent. The powers that be decided that rush-hour was the perfect time to close a lane for resurfacing. (For non-Atliens, 141 is the main road through Atlanta's largest business district. It's legendary for it's traffic.)

Tension Mounts

Great, I'm now officially going to be late picking the kid up, and I have to pee a little bit. Oh well, I'll just have to hold it and pee at the do-jang. I don't want to be late. Unfortunately, traffic didn't really get much better for the rest of the ride home.

By the time I was getting close to home, I was in dire straits. It's amazing what happens to your thought process when you have to pee really really badly. I was sitting there behind a line of cars, not moving, and wondering if I could make use of the coke can I had emptied an hour before. It truly seemed like a viable option.

Unfortunately, a couple of minutes from the school, I hit the point of no return. I could no longer care less that I was late for picking up my son. If I didn't go right then, I was definitely going to wet myself.

The Promised Land

That's when I looked up and saw a Kroger.

I pulled into the parking space, jumped out of the car, and literally sprinted to the back of the store, where, to my horror, the bathroom was closed for cleaning. Two Mexican guys were in there with a big floor cleaning machine. Soap bubbles were two inches high off the ground. The guy working the machine had his back to me, and couldn't see me, the other guy stopped me at the door.

He only spoke Spanish, but from his gestures, it was pretty clear that I was NOT welcome to use the bathroom at this time. At the same time, I knew there was no way I was going to make it out of the store dry, let alone to my car and off to another bathroom.

So I knocked on the door of the girl's room. "Is anybody in here?" "Yes" came a voice. Crap!

So I looked at the dude at the door, and a terrible realization came over me. I'm 6'4" and this guy is maybe 5'3". Screw it! I pushed him out of the way, locked myself into the stall, and had what would turn out to be one of two great pisses that day. It didn't feel like it was ever going to stop, and to be honest, it felt so great that I didn't want it to. Even writing about it now sends chills up my spine.

The Chase Scene

I opened the door of the stall a much happier man, only to come face to face with the little guy I had pushed out of the way and his coworker. They were obviously not happy. REALLY unhappy.

I muttered an apology and edged past them out of the bathroom to a cacophony of yelling in Spanish. I couldn't understand much of it, but I got the gist. I tried to be nice and wipe my feet on a mop just outside the bathroom door, but that only made my shoes dirtier causing my retreat to be marked with nasty brown footprints.

What followed was a brisk walk speed chase through the greeting card aisle with me muttering apologies and them yelling loudly and gesturing to the floor. Of course, since it was 6:30 in the afternoon, the store was full of people picking up stuff on their way home. All activity ceased as I made my way past the registers and through the exit, my antagonizers in tow.

Fortunately, they didn't follow me all the way to my car, because I was beginning to wonder what my obituary would have said about the reason for my murder.


UPDATE:
I forgot to mention the real humdinger. When I got home, I told Shnoogs about what had happened, and she happily pointed out that the store had another set of bathrooms at the front.

Doh!