Have I no boundaries?

*Comments are now CLOSED! Winner has been chosen and will be announced on Monday!*

We went to a local festival on Monday. It was your usual festival: vendor booths, high school dance troupes, carnival rides, funnel cakes, and me, SWEATING THROUGH MY PANTS.

OMG you guys, I mean, yes, it was hot out, and there was no breeze and it was muggy and humid and people were packed into the carnival area where Asher wanted to ride some rides, but there is really no excuse for the fact that the back of my pants looked like I'd sat directly in a puddle. I am not talking about a little spot or two. I am talking a wet spot roughly the size of, oh, say, a TOILET SEAT. When I started suspecting what was happening, I asked Dave to take a look and he busted out laughing and said something very supportive like, “DUDE, that is REALLY BAD,” and then I couldn't stop looking at the backs of OTHER people's pants to see if anyone else was maybe having a similar situation but it turns out that NO ONE WAS, not even people who were wearing jeans; not even people who were GROSSLY OVERWEIGHT. Just me! I was the only one wandering around with overzealous under-butt sweat glands! I suppose it didn't help that I was wearing khaki-colored capri pants made out of this ridiculously thin material that shows even the tiniest hint of moisture. But that fact was only comforting to ME, the only person who knew that because she had access to the tag in the back of the pants. It's not like I could walk up to people and explain that this sweat situation looked especially bad because of the cotton/polyester blend I was wearing and not because I'm a sweaty sweaty HOG of a person. I swear! I'm JUST LIKE YOU! I don't usually DO THIS!

As we were leaving, we walked by a news crew. I kept on walking with my head down, certain they were filming my backside so they could air it later during a story about the oppressive heat with the caption, “Local Woman Sweats Aggressively Through Pants.” And then I turned around to find my husband attempting to photograph my unfortunate situation with his iPhone and I was NOT AMUSED.

I had to get that out of the way before I get to the next thing on my list, which is that I have acquired a revolutionary product that I cannot believe never existed before now and simultaneously, that I cannot believe even exists at all. And what YOU will not believe is that my brother's mother-in-law bought it for me. I do not know if he is comfortable with that, but I don't plan on asking.

It's a device to help women pee standing up.

STANDING UP. I know! FRIGGIN INGENIOUS. Although, the product seems to have been designed with outdoorsy people in mind. Chances are slim that I'm going to need to pee while paddling a canoe or something. (I mean, if I am on a canoe? It is SUMMER and I can get in the water to pee. Who canoes in cold weather? Besides OUTDOORSY PEOPLE?) (Actually, that's not even true, because it takes me an hour to loosen up enough to pee in the ocean, so I cannot imagine the Performance Pressure I would be under if I had to climb out of a canoe and pee while possibly holding up the rest of the canoe party.) (Would only canoe as part of a canoe party; canoeing alone just sounds like a good way to get exhausted and lost.) But I have been in many many bathrooms where a product like this would have come in very useful! And not to mention certain OTHER COUNTRIES, specifically the ones where the norm is squatting over a big dirty hole in the ground. SHUDDER.

What does make me laugh is the web site. “The feminine urination device that lets you go anywhere.” And there's a photo of a girl taking a picture of the Taj Mahal and I'm inappropriately picturing her realizing she needs to go while she's on a guided tour and whipping out her pink peeing aid and letting it go up against a wall. And then she sighs happily. There should be a subtitle: “The female urination device that lets you go anywhere. NOT THAT WE ARE ADVOCATING THAT. For Pete's sake, do not urinate on the Taj Mahal.”

Anyway, so let's have a contest! I will send the winner a THREE-PACK of Go Girl disposable urination devices, to pee with or just to freak out your friends and family. All you have to do is leave a comment telling me the weirdest place you've ever peed or HAD to pee (the entire story is welcome, if you feel led). (I would have a hard time choosing between that dumpster in Buckhead and a train in Switzerland, where the bathroom was just a little room with a toilet that opened up DIRECTLY ONTO THE TRAIN TRACKS. All that fresh mountain air, whooshing right up onto my naked behind.) I'll randomly choose a winner on Saturday.

Comments

[divrchk]

Oh My! I can't remember a strange place that I've had to pee and hold it, although I'm sure it happened. I can say that I was at the hair dresser the other day and it was a long appt. i was wearing shorts and when I got up there were sweat marks on the chair from my thighs sweating. Gross!

[Megan]

Once I was driving home after work and I got caught in a blizzard. Traffic just stopped, not moving even a single inch, for THREE HOURS. And I. Had. To. Pee. I kept squirming in my seat, looking out the window at the blizzard and the eight inches of snow already on the ground, then looking around at the other cars stranded on the highway with me, and I had no idea what to do. Get out of the car and squat on the side of road in plain sight of all those cars? Pee in the car (unacceptable)? Or just hold it? Yeah, I ended up holding it. Though three years later, I kinda wish I had just gone on the side of the road. It might have made an even better story.

[KQ]

8th grade camping trip, I'd never peed outside before in my life. I'd held it all day because I was terrified of going in the woods. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and I ran to (what I thought) was an isolated, quiet place (in the pitch-dark woods). I peed FOREVER. Mid-urination, I started hearing leaves crunching, coming closer...turns out I hadn't gone very far into the woods at all, I'd decided to squat just BARELY uphill from the path that my entire class chose to take to the bonfire. I heard them coming, but I hadn't peed all day and couldn't stop. SO, first experience peeing outside became my first experience with exhibitionism.

Also, my boyfriend (who was on the camping trip) wound up kissing a girl named Katie that night and breaking up with me the next morning. Can't help but wonder if the two things are related.

And! I have not peed outside since. Ever, ever.

[Ashley]

The strangest place I've ever had to pee was in a barn....at night....with people sleeping in the hay-loft. So I went out into the pasture behind a tree.

The WORST place, however, that I've had to pee was in Paris at the Arc de Triomphe. It stank SO bad and it just FELT like if you touched something it would be coated in urine that had gotten so hot it had evaporated and then condensed onto the surface. You literally did not want to breathe, let alone touch anything.

Come to think of it, I think I decided to hold it not only because of the smell and the filth, but because the wall separating the men and women's bathrooms was only part of a wall, so you could hear the men on the other side of the wall doing their thing, including my brother-in-law making his grunts and humming to try to cover up the noises of his business.

Talk about a memory I'll never forget!!

[Lisa]

The most random place I had to pee (and did) was on the way to Denver, Colorado for American Idol tryouts. For some reason, at the time I had to go, there were NO stops. So I went on the side of the road in the desert. Luckily we found a mound of sand I could somewhat hide behind. My friend caught it on camera though. It's hanging on her fridge.

[Lisa]

Wait! Can I just tell one more story? This is in behalf of said friend. She was driving with her then boyfriend (now husband, even after this) to Disneyland. She had to go real bad. He made her pee in a bottle!!! Can you imagine how handy this device would have been on that trip?? If I win, I'm giving these to her!

[Becky]

Ack. How about in the middle of a dirt country road at night? Things were going swimmingly (GET IT?? Why yes, I *do* write my own jokes! Don't forget to tip your waitress) until another car decided to take that moment to drive down the otherwise deserted road.

It illuminated my milky-white ass for the poor driver to be blinded by.

[Tonggu Momma]

Delurking here... This is not my story, so it doesn't count, but my college roommate went out in the woods one time. Not too strange, I know. Except that she used some leaves to... er... you know. Only those leaves? Poison ivy.

[Elsha]

Okay, first of all, I have a friend who has used those! She worked on a drilling rig offshore where all the guys just pee off the side...so she had to pee off the side.

Now, I can't believe I'm actually going to tell this story, but here it is. Background: I work in the oilfield, so I've spent lots of time on locations a million miles from nowhere. Mostly you just pee outside in places like that. One time though, I was on a location that was totally barren, no bushes, no trees, no nothing but my truck. AND it was the middle of winter so it was freezing cold with like 30 mph winds. I would have preferred to wait for a bathroom of some sort, but that just wasn't happening so I ended up peeing in a plastic cup in the back seat. Trying to balance over a plastic cup and pee is not very fun by the way.

[Sally]

All I can think of are stories where I needed to pee but couldn't! Here's my fav. I got a concussion playing rugby in college, and they took me to the emergency room, where they wanted to do a CT scan of my brain. Only first they had to make sure I wasn't pregnant, so, I had to give a urine sample. BUT- a)They wouldn't let me sit up, so, rugby shorts around my knees, potential neck injury collar around my neck, bedpan under my butt, sheet over my body, and the ER was crowded so I was in a hallway in front of the checkin desk. AND b) They wouldn't let the totally hungover, dehydrated, just-played-three-hours-of-rugby college chick have anything to drink until they were sure I was ok. So I laid on that bedpan FOREVER before they gave up and did the damn CT anyway. When the nurse was wheeling me back, she bitched the whole way about how she couldn't believe they were doing the scan without knowing I wasn't pregnant. I was like "Look, lady. I use protection. I'm on the pill. There's no way I can be pregnant." She responded with "Yeah, that's what I thought" and whipped out a picture of her baby.

Sorry for the novel. I like to talk about pee. I REALLY want a Go Girl, not that it would have helped there.

[Whitney]

Okay this is super creeper but i was totally there on monday, too..its about a block from my house. I, however, did not last more than an hour (the rides, heat, and carnival smell are all just too much for me)

[Grace]

i have already thought of five awkward bathroom stories which tells me that i need this device badly.

1) Made fun of kids peeing in their beds at camp at age 6. Peed in own pants the next day.

2)Stuck outside a disco in the French countryside at 17 waiting for host sister to come back from making out with boyfriend. Peed in a ditch and ended up peeing on fancy dance club clothes... and spent the rest of the night dancing in them.

3)Traffic at standstill on the hwy on the way to Orlando. Blazing hot out. Wilderness on all sides, no trees anywhere. Cars all around. Two cups of coffee had been consumed and were wanting back out NOW.

4) ok enough. there are more, but I've done enough to qualify, right?

[Jamie]

I'm a perpetual lurker, but I had to come out to tell this story, being that it's so embaressing I can't tell anyone I actually KNOW.

About four years ago, when I was taking some college classes, I was tutoring at an elementary school as part of one of my classes. I had to drop my daughter at the babysitter, hoof it to the boondocks to this elementary school to tutor, then have a lab class and then a class class.

So, I'm rushing to the tutoring gig and I have to pee. Bad. Out in the boondocks, where this school is, there are a buttload of train tracks. There's no way to get to this school except over a bunch of train tracks. So I cross over a couple and I'm stopped by a train. A train that isn't moving. I think to myself, maybe I can turn around and FIND another way. But then another train approaches and I am STUCK BETWEEN TWO NON-MOVING TRAINS.

So what do you do when you have to go and you are stuck between two non-moving trains? You put it in park, climb into the back of your minivan, drop trou and pee in a rogue McDonald's cup. Then you leave it in the parking lot after class. Just because you are 24 and have a child does NOT make you mature or smart.

[Heidi T]

This is a story about my mom. When I was younger, right after college, my mom and I worked in the same general area, which was about 45 minutes away from our home, so we frequently commuted together. To get home from this place, we had to drive on a highway over a mountain. One night, on our way home, they closed this highway while we were on it because there was a sheet of ice and they needed to salt and sand it before anyone could go down it. About 2 hours into this, and my mom had to pee badly and couldn't hold it anymore. I am driving and she is in the passenger seat and we are in the right lane and surrounded by cars, trucks, tractor trailers. We devised a way that we would open the back door and open the front door and she would hover between the two doors, do her business and get back in and be done. We open the doors, she gets out there and does her thing and attempts to get back in the car. Well, remember that sheet of ice? The pee has made it really really slippery, so my mom falls over and slides 4 feet away from the car, pants around her ankles, bush to the world, and she can't get up because of the slippery (with pee) ice and I can't help her because I am simply laughing so hard that tears are rolling out of me.

She did eventually get back in the car and the only thing that was damaged was her dignity.

[Lizzie]

In St. Louis, Senegal. A (white) girlfriend and I met at a bar for a drink. Now, let's just pause here and think about Senegal for a moment. Muslim country. Showing legs is really strongly frowned upon unless you're a prostitute. Hell, drinking alcohol is strongly frowned upon, especially if you're a woman. White people are the vast minority...

Ok, now, I'm in this bar after 3 beers looking for the bathroom only - get this - THERE ISN'T ONE. We had to pay our tab and go around the corner where we peed squatting together (we hoped rather inconspicuously) against the wall terrified that someone would come by and see.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of weird places in Senegal that I peed. Huh.

[ellbee]

When I was in college, I spent my summers as a member and then later as an instructor in a drum and bugle corps. We spent all summer touring the country in old coach buses, performing at various competitions. As it happens, instructors were allowed to have coolers of alcohol on their bus, so my friend and I loaded up the booze for our first tour as staff. The first night out from Denver we started drinking and lo and behold, I had to go right about the time the caravan was 100 miles from ANYwhere. The porta-potty in the "bathroom" at the back of the bus has ceased to work years before, so I was shown:

1. A Gatorade bottle.
2. The top half of another Gatorade bottle.
3. A small window.

Yes. I once peed in a Gatorade bottle using another as a funnel and poured it out the window of a moving bus.

[Sleepynita]

Just yesterday I peed into an empty slurpee cup in the car. Traffic was awful and I had the pee sweats while waiting for the fucktards to get out of my way. I impressed my self by not dribbling.

Girls gotta do what a girls got to do.

[Janssen]

I remember hiking down a mountain when I was about 12 and having to go to the bathroom SO badly and it was dark and kind of scary and the whole group was waiting for us and there was no toilet paper. Would have killed for a GoGirl.

[Kimberly]

The side of a mountain in Colorado. I remember asking my mom which side of the Continental Divide we were squatting on.

[Adrienne]

Fortunately, I can't think of a time where I wasn't able to get to a restroom in time, but I have been in restrooms where I would have rather found a place outside!

[Emily]

I have no story, but did you read the FAQs on their website? Q: "How do I wash it?" A: "Many women just stick it
in the dishwasher." Whaaaa???!!!!

[beyond]

peeing restrooms are sometimes more frightening than peeing outside. that said, my favorite place to pee outside is in the ocean (or a lake).
i've been in indonesia for longer periods of time. not always fun to pee there. i often try to time my drinking so that i won't have to pee when we're not at the hotel. it's tricky balancing the no-pee vs. dehydration, and i can proudly day that i am quite an expert at it.

[Kim]

Sadly enough, I have a story.
About 5 years ago I was out late one evening on my way home. Can't remember where I had been. I had our two foster children in the car. One an infant and one a toddler aged 2. I had to go SO bad. I still about 5-10 minutes before I got home. It was so late, how was I going to stop somewhere and pee when I would have to carry in an infant and a toddler and where would I put them while I peed?
So pulled over into an old lot where a school had been torn down and there were some big trees. It was dark with no light since the lot had been cleared. I pulled up as close as I could to the trees, took some kleenex with me, and did my business and hopped back in the car.
I forgot to mention the lot is right next door to the emergency room and local hospital. But I had to go real bad!
I kept hoping I would not been seen and then they would wonder what type of fit mother I was to pee under trees next to the hospital!

[Jackie]

I would have to choose between two.

The first was in the Ukraine, I walked into the bathroom (DIRTY) and opened the stall door to see that the "toilet" was actually just a urnal laying flat on the ground, with two foot grips for squatting. And the walls? They were in NO CONDITION to be placing your hands on to brace youself. I tried to use my elbows.

The second was in Budapest. It was my "time of the month" and I was travelling with my German cousins (MALE German cousins) and I HAD to get to the bathroom, or it would haev been more then a sweet stain on my pants.
So we get into this little coffee shop resturant place, I got to sit down on the toilet, and the seat FLIES off the toliet, and I'm there, trying to get things done, while having to sit/squat on just the toilet rim.

Both are situations that are a lot funnier, now that I'm NOT IN THEM!

[Tina]

Well, I would use it for my seven year old daughter because she must have the smallest bladder in the world. Whenever we go somewhere she has to pee.. and she doesn't give much warning and she will pee in the car! So we must pull over and she has peed on my feet more times then not... One time we were in the mountains and she peed all down my husbands leg. Yeap, go girl looks awesome!