My Little Puddle
Sitting cross legged on the cold wooden floor of the school hall. I’m listening intently but nervously to every word the P.E. teacher is jabbering on about.
I was very distracted. I was in great need of wee. Or as we called it in the 90s a ‘wee wee’ or if we were feeling rebellious a ‘Slash’. I was so desperate for a slash I was closing my eyes and whispering words of encouragement to myself. I couldn’t think straight and certainly couldn’t listen to the bollocks my teacher was saying. I can’t for the life of me remember the teachers name but I remember she was very nice and approachable and encouraging.
The only obstacle I had between me NEEDING a wee and me GOING for a wee was simply putting my hand up and asking my teacher if I could go to the toilet please.
But I couldn’t do it.
The one thing that scared me more than talking to a teacher was talking to a teacher in front of a class full of people. I was never the most involved and active pupil. I wasn’t naughty either cause I was too scared to be naughty but I just liked to fade into the background and putting my hand up and stopping the teacher half way through her very long monologue and asking to go for a ‘wee wee’ in front of the whole class really put the shivers up me. It still does. This fear of teachers lasted my whole life in education. My report cards often read:
‘Yeah Thomas is good and well behaved but he gets a lot of stuff wrong because he doesn’t seem to understand it and all he needs to do is ask for help’
I refused to ask for help but it wasn’t because I was too proud or I thought I knew better or I didn’t care. I was just nervous and then the longer you leave it the worse it is.
I swear there is not a day goes by that I don’t hope and wish and pray to the Gods that my future children literally have none of my personality traits. I hope they are zero percent like me, especially at school. And at work. And at socials. I’d be happy if they had my dimples but that’s about it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies never mind the people I’m probably gonna love most in life.
But anyway, there I am thinking about how much I need to wee. I can’t wait any longer. I’m just gonna do it. I’m wearing black shorts. I’m just gonna piss myself. We are all sitting quite far away from each other and I can just piss my pants and it will all soak into my shorts and then we can do the P.E. lesson and if I just don’t stand too close to anyone so they can’t smell my pissed stained clothes, then I can get through the lesson, put my piss shorts at the bottom of my bag and no one would ever know apart from my Mum, but she had another 30 years of disappointment to come, so to find some piss shorts buried in my school bag was just good preparation for her.
So I do it.
I feel it stream out of me as my shorts filling up and my Scientific thinking that the piss would just soak into the shorts did not turn out to be accurate at all. I can see it dribbling out a little. It’s too late to stop now though.
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The teacher indicates that the lesson is gonna begin so everyone gets up and gets into teams. I coyly get up and walk away from where I was sitting and don’t look back. My shorts heavy with piss, but as long as no-one smells me there is a chance they might just think it’s a water leak and they might not know who was sat where on the floor. I walk to the opposite side of the hall as far away as possible.
The teacher is talking to the teaching assistant who I can’t remember the name of but I do remember we had an unspoken attraction for each other at the time.
They call me over.
“Thomas were you sitting over there?”
She points over to where I was sat where there is now just a perfect puddle.
A perfect puddle of piss.
My piss.
“Er, was I sitting over there?” I ask
We all look at the puddle of piss.
“Yes I was” I confirm
“Why didn’t you just ask to go to the toilet?”
She wasn’t annoyed, just confused. A feeling I would get used to inflicting onto people.
Surely this is the END of any hope I have of climbing the social ladder at school? Surely this is gonna stick with me for your whole school career? ‘Little Tommy piss pants’
Well, my luck was in. A kid who was much further down the social ladder than me was getting dressed after the P.E.lesson where I’d just urinated myself and as he was putting his trousers on in front of everyone he just pissed himself. Not even discreetly, like we all saw It happening. I could not believe my luck. No one is gonna remember my little puddle after this explosion of piss in the changing room. Also he didn’t have an older sister in school with connections so he had no protection from funny nicknames. I never really got bullied much at school at all, which you may say is great and I am so lucky, but I’m now in my thirties and my best friend is a dog I only see in person twice a year, so I’m not the most emotionally stable. Maybe a bit of bullying could have done me some good.
