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 Recently, I walked into the bathroom to witness my son in the tub, peeing into a cup -- and giggling -- and I didn't know whether to be disgusted or proud. So I was both.
Peeing in unusual spots is one of the primary benefits of being male, and one that countless males enjoy on a daily basis -- it's why we like camping so much. Yet the ability takes an unfortunately disgusting development path through boyhood. Upon discovering this ability, young boys take full advantage, peeing pretty much anywhere they see fit so long as it doesn't get them arrested. And even then that doesn't always matter.
We boys pee everywhere, starting with various places in the house or basement under the false idea that mom would never find out -- though we usually discover soon thereafter that upon giving birth a woman's nasal skills intensify five-fold. (Her saliva also develops ultra cleaning power and eyes grow in the back of her head.) Eventually, we take this skill into public. In my boyhood, me and my friends then learned that this ability could be used in practical jokes involving cans of Mountain Dew. In college, while walking home one dark evening, I passed a house in which one of the second-story windows was open. In the window was a boy, not much older than mine, standing up, pants down, peeing onto the front lawn despite the presence of me, a pedestrian, or the dozen or so other potential observers in the form of the boy's neighbors. Fortunately, age and maturity calm this down some, until college when alcohol and independence are introduced and the public peeing commences once again. But then that period ends and we learn to suppress the peeing urges once again -- until we arrive at old age, when the who-gives-a-damn gene kicks in. For now, however, I'm sufficiently paranoid about perception -- and public indecency arrests -- to do any of the sort in view of others. Unless I'm camping. |