I peed my pants in College...didnt you?

I peed my pants in college.  Yep, I’m that cool.  As a sophomore at the University of South Alabama, I decided to go on a water diet.  It was a simple plan.  Super smart plan.  This is how it went.  You drink water.  Lots and lots of water.  When you think you are going to combust all over your music theory class, you are close to achieving the highest level of greatness with this water diet, so you simply drink more water.  And I thought it was brilliant.  That is all.  True Story. 

So one day I am downing unnatural amounts of water during my music theory class.  I look like I am doing my own sort of weirdo Chinese water torture and others are starting to notice.  I smile and tell them how I am on this super smart water diet.  I am brilliant (Did I already say that?).  If you are right now imagining all the crazies running around telling you that they eat just like the cave men during the Paleolithic period, claiming that people who never got over four feet tall and probably had no teeth past the age of ten and died by the age of twenty-five had the best nutrients ……..you are doing a great job at imagining my kind of crazy.    

Class dismisses and I pick up my over-sized water jug and my purse and start out the door.  I have to make it across several fields to my statistics class in ten minutes.  I am wearing my normal uniform.  Sophie shorts, a Chi-Omega t-shirt, brown rainbow flip-flops and nothing more.  So I start to run . . .walk . . .run . . .as fast as I can because I have been late to stats more times than I can count.  Half-way across the first field it hits me.  Not like a little message that is whispered to my brain.  My bladder screams in its most angry dragon voice, “I HAVE TO PEE NOWWWWWWWWWW!”    I panic.  There is no where to go.  Literally.  There is no where “TO GO.” 

So I spot the nearest building.  The administration building where the Dean of Students and the President of the University hang out.  I make a mad dash in my flip-flops for the front door.  I make it in the building and I am running up the stairs to find the women’s bathroom that is for some reason NOT on the first floor where it would TOTALLY make sense for it to be. No,no, it is on the third floor.  As I am running up the stairs, someone up above slams the hallway door and it scares me.  I don’t think you get it.  IT. SCARES. ME.  I jump and it all comes running down my leg.  I stand frozen as the waterfall flows down the stairs.  There is no going back.

 So I sit.  I sit down on those cold, lonely stairs and contemplate the fact that my Sophie shorts are now so wet they are sticking to my thighs.  And then it hits me. “What does one do when one is eighteen and pees her pants in public?”  I reassure myself that I am not truly “in public.”  That would mean someone was around.  I peed my pants by myself. I feel much better about that.  Just when I am feeling better by my li’l pep-talk, the door opens and down comes a group of students.  They see me.  They see the water still dripping down the steps and their lips curl up and they can’t stop staring.  They really were overly nosey and should have controlled their surprised faces.  Come on people, it’s just a little pee…on the stairs….of a public building……in college……  The moment of silence could not go on any longer and they were clearly rude enough not to talk first, so I smiled and said in my most classy voice, “Yep, I just wet my pants.”  They could see that, and they were a little grossed out, but it happens.  “Yes, this happens…all the time…well not with me…but with others…I mean…..”  I had nothing more to say to them. 

After a while I decided I was not going to make it to statistics.  Another miss.  So I made my way to the girls’ bathroom where I dried my shorts on with the hand-dryer until I could sneak out unnoticed.  I got into my car and drove home.  No more class for that day.

That night I picked up Jeremy Gibbs for a date.  He would later become my husband, and I’m pretty sure it was this date that sealed the deal.  You see, when he got into the car, he kept crinkling his nose up.  He finally looked at me and said, “It smells funny in here.”  I laughed and threw back my beautiful hair and with tons of southern belle charm I said, “Oh don’t worry about that honey.  I peed my pants today and got in my car with wet pants….that’s the smell.”  I smiled my million-dollar smile at him.  Then he knew it was true love.