Peed and Defeated

When you're in tight snow pants, sometimes you have no choice but to take it.

During one multiday stretch at my friend Adrienne’s during winter break, we decided to try out these new ski shoes her mother, Nancy, had bought on a whim. They were like tiny sleds you strap to your feet. Nancy let me borrow her expensive snowsuit she’d wear skiing the slopes of Breckenridge, Colorado, but she was a tiny, petite woman, and I was a robust, meaty child. Zipping me into it took a lot of elbow grease, and I grew increasingly self-conscious as Nancy grunted during the final stretch up to the top of the zipper. My coat at the time was one of my mom’s hand-me-downs. At some point, there was a tear on the back, so my mom sewed on a large square patch from some leftover fabric to cover it. The square was off center, and its pattern was a conflicting moss green paisley. Mom was very stylish, so I’m quite sure she wouldn’t have been caught dead in it with that ugly off- center patch. But I was just a kid, who cares? Saved her forty bucks on a new coat, at least.

Adrienne, in her sleek ski gear, and I, in her mom’s tight ski pants and my ugly patch coat, huffed our way to the top of a big hill. I shuffled, stiff like a robot, one extended movement away from splitting Nancy’s snowsuit clean at the crotch. I noticed I had to pee early on and felt the urge increase, but I was far too invested to turn back now. The labor of peeling out of head-to-toe winter gear, only to put it on all over again, was far beyond my tolerance threshold. I carried on.

As we approached the top of the hill, Adrienne volun- teered to go first. She sat down in the snow and strapped her sled shoes onto her boots one at a time. But when she tried to stand up, she’d repetitively do the splits, as if she were on a giant block of ice. Helpless to assist out of fear I’d rip her mom’s snowsuit if I bent over too far, I tried to offer tips that were no help at all. “Dig grooves into the snow and step inside those,” I’d offer. Or, “Try to just stand up in one big swoop!” That was particularly bad advice because she went into the splits so hardcore, she had to rock back and forth on her pelvis to get a leg loose.

“Okay, I got this,” she said, huffing and grunting, swinging her leg around for another go. After a few scrambles, she managed to stand straight up, but once her posture clicked, she took off down the hill like lightning. Adrienne screamed as if she were on a train that just hopped the rails, heading straight for a cliff. Her scream’s pitch was one of pure terror, and it was truly the most hilarious vision I had ever seen. At one point, she tried to grab on to a tree limb to stop her momentum, but it only flipped her around and shot her down the hill backward.

“Just fall!” I yelled after her, but it was barely intelligible through my laughter. My belly laugh was so deep, there were moments I stopped breathing, scaring even myself. But for whatever reason, she was determined to remain standing, and I could hear her scream lessen as she squeezed smaller out of view. At the end of the hill, she exploded into a plume of snow dust. My laugh then lifted to a new dimension where I found myself on an alternate plane of existence.

That’s when it happened.

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At first, it was just a small amount of pee. The slightest little dribble, barely worth mentioning. But that dribble signaled to the rest of my body that it was game on. I clinched and tightened best I could, terrified by what was happening. But then I caught a glimpse of Adrienne trying to get up at the bottom of the hill, now doing front to back splits like she was James Brown in concert. No amount of clenching could hold back the floodgates that burst so wide open, all I could do was lie back and accept it. It’s happening, I cried. I’m peeing now. Once it started, there was no stopping it. I sat on the snow, fell to my back, and released my entire bladder into Nancy’s snowsuit. At first it felt nice and warm, but it took mere moments to grow wet and cold. Then more pee came, running and running, soaking and drenching. It was so unimaginable to pee my friend’s mother’s pants, I actually felt nothing at all. Numb and urine soaked.

Adrienne finally got wise and took off the shoe sleds. She marched back up the hill, while I still lay motionless, just peeing. Slowly, gently. “Did you see that?” she asked, nearly out of breath.

“Oh, I saw it,” I said, hopeless. A corpse.

“There’s no way you’re putting these on,” she said, throwing them down into the snow. “I could have hit a tree and died!” She plopped down next to me, furious her mom had endangered us with those death boots. It took a few beats for her to notice I wasn’t quite myself. “You okay?”

“I just peed,” I told her.

“What’s that?”

“I just peed. Like, for real peed. Right into your mom’s

snow pants.”

“I’m sure it’s fine—”

“Adrienne, trust me,” I interrupted. “It’s bad.” This

was a worst-case scenario; how could I possibly go on? My mind rummaged for ways out of my predicament, but I was a child! What could I do? There were no cell phones to secretly beg my sister to pick me up and whisk me away, to mercifully never see Adrienne or her family again. The only possible path was to face the facts. The raw truth was this: I borrowed my friend’s mom’s expensive name-brand ski pants and peed in them, helplessly, like a toddler. The only thing left to do was walk like a toy soldier back to the house and meet my fate. Unless, of course, I could stall and come up with a plan.

“Please, don’t tell your mom,” I begged. “Maybe we can pat these dry. Lather them in soap. There has to be some- thing we can do!”

“She doesn’t have to know,” Adrienne assured me. Sweet, kind Adrienne, willing to help me cover up my humiliating crime. We slowly made our way back to her house. My gait was now more like a toy solider waddling in peed fatigues. We took our boots off in the garage, where I noticed even my socks were soaked. We opened the door into the house slowly. There was no mother to the north, or south. We ran through the kitchen, then sprinted up the stairs into Adrienne’s bedroom. We shut the door, and with her help, I was able to peel out of the snow pants. To my relief, I had packed an extra pair of underwear and green jogging pants. I changed into them quickly, then observed the pee pants on the ground as my mind raced to find a solution. Maybe they don’t really smell like pee, I considered. I picked them up, took a huge whiff, then blew my head back in disgust. “These stink so bad,” I told her. “What are we gonna do?”

Neither of us knew how to use a washing machine, so it was time to explore Adrienne’s higher-than-average IQ. “I know,” she offered. “Let’s spray them with air freshener and hang them up in the guest bedroom.” It wasn’t foolproof, but it had merit, so we went on a hunt for the air freshener. We snuck around on our tiptoes, dashing behind corners as her mom would walk by, searching through every cupboard in the house. Unable to find it, we went to plan B: perfume. “You got any perfume?” I whispered as we hid behind the kitchen island while her mom got herself a glass of water.

“Jōvan White Musk? Anything?”

“I have Ex’cla-ma’tion,” she whispered. “Will that work?”

Not my favorite fragrance, but what choice did we have? It had to work. Adrienne and I slid back upstairs and doused the pants in perfume until the fumes gave us a mild head- ache. Her bedroom reeked, unsurprisingly, as if someone at Walgreens who had just peed their pants picked up the Ex’cla-ma’tion perfume tester and doused themselves from head to toe. With bated breath, we looked both ways out of her room before scurrying into the guest bedroom. We hung my greatest shame in the closet, closed the door, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. We did it. Nancy would never know I peed her expensive ski pants. We were so confident, in fact , we moved on swiftly from the drama, heading back to the kitchen to fix ourselves a little snack.

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This was an excerpt from the chapter “Micky’s Got a Gun” from my new (most favorite) book I’m Not Ready for This. It’s available for pre-order with bonus gifts for those who order now.

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