I Gotta Pee

I left the house bundled up like an Eskimo and headed to school.  It was freezing cold outside.  I had on my new, rabbit-fur lined boots.  I loved those boots.  They were fluffy outside and knee high.  Mom tried to get me practical boots that were big, ugly and waterproof but I wasn’t having that.  I protested until I got what I wanted.

Life was alright.  We had just moved into an area called Bexley on the east side of Columbus.  Our townhouse was really nice.  Mom was working for the post office.  It was just the two of us and we were doing pretty damn good.

We had new furniture, new TV’s, and beautiful paintings.  Mom had a new car and even my bedroom set was beautiful.  It was something like you’d never seen before and it was imported all the way from Mexico.  It had neon yellow and tangerine colored flowers’ surrounding the antique brass handles with lime green leaves on the stems of the flowers.It was a huge set and had a lot of pieces:  two big bookcases with storage under them, a desk with drawers on the side, two nightstands, and a headboard.  I loved it – my mother had exquisite taste and always managed to find beautiful things that were often overlooked by others.

At five years of age I was already walking to and from school.  The first few days, I had to think real hard about where my school was.  I had a bad sense of direction even back then.  My school was a brick school with a big American flag on the front lawn.  I only remember a couple of things about the school itself – the walk to and from school and the fact that I was the darkest child in the entire school, which was unusual for someone as fair skinned as myself.

I also remember, the time I pissed in my favorite boots on the way home and ruined them.  I almost made it to the front door – I could see it just up ahead as I trudged through the thick snow.  I kept telling myself, “Angela, you can make it, you can make it”!  “Look, the door knocker is just a few yards away”.

It was so cold.  I made it all the way to the walkway leading up to the front door.  I tried to run, but the snow was so deep and I had to go so bad that I literally had to walk and try to hold my legs together at the same time to avoid pissing.  I finally made it to the front door.  All I could think was, “Just one more minute, just one more minute”.  I started doing the “I gotta pee” dance and banging on the door as hard as I could.  I banged three times and waited for a couple of seconds – no answer.  I banged five more times with no answer and continued the “I gotta pee” dance.  Then I heard my mother yell, “just one second, I’ll be right there”.  Right at that very moment, I reached my holding limit.  Warm pee began to leak out down my legs, through my pants and into my new rabbit fur boots.  As I finished, mom opened the door.  She looked at my face.  She could tell something was wrong.  “What happened Angela”, she asked?  I looked up at her with tears in my eyes and whined, “I peed in my new boots”.

My mother tried everything to get that smell out of those boots; cans of Lysol, soap and water, nothing worked.  They were never the same.

…these are pieces of my forthcoming autobiography “Baloney Sandwiches”…….

I hope you enjoy!