hm wetland field biology course this summer has got me thinking.
what if you had to wake up super early for class but your alarm didn't go off in time and so you had to rush out the door without being able to take your morning pee first because your professor wanted to leave at 8 am on the dot because there's a long drive ahead to the site you'll all be working in today. and of course they're not going to wait for you to use the bathroom on campus first before you all pile onto the bus because they already waited a good 5-10 minutes for you to get there and they don't want to wait any longer.
so you grit your teeth and board the bus, hauling your heavy bag with you and setting it on your lap so your classmates have room to sit still, the bulk of it digging into your torso in a way that you can't quite make comfortable and that pushes into you even more whenever your bus hits a bumpy stretch of road (all the more common the further you stray from civilization), or when the person sitting next to you shifts around, or when you have to pull your water bottle out for a drink, and boy do you--the bus is stuffy already, and as the summer day begins to heat up more, it's only getting worse. and it's not like the water stored in your bladder is going to get reabsorbed back into your dehydrating body, is it?
after a couple long hours, you finally reach the site your class will be working in today. you wince as you drag yourself out of your seat with your bag behind you--fortunately, it's heavy enough that you don't look too suspicious stepping out onto the gravel road hunched-over. the professor begins relaying the plans for today as the rest of the class stands around, as attentive as they can be on this humid hot day, but you're too distracted by the growing, now almost painful pressure in your lower abdomen to pay them any mind. you look behind you to see if there's maybe any shrubs you can step behind real quick to relieve yourself--
and it's all standing water. it's a gentle, mucky slope down into an emergent marsh, covered in lily pads with cattails and arrowheads sticking out from the span of murky water. water that's gently rippling against the vegetation with every gust of wind. water that's broken by the occasional splash of a frog leaping out, or perhaps an osprey diving in. water that's running down the back of a diving duck as it resurfaces, dribbling back down into the pond in a way only you can notice. and it's deep, too, going far up these cattail stems and oh God. you have to wear your chest waders today. your heavy, heavy, waterproof chest waders, so you can get deep into the marsh.
you tune back in to your lesson as the rest of the class slips into their own waders--you don't know why you're going in there today, all you know is that you are and you need to put on your waders and that can only begin with an excruciating kneel down to untie your sneakers. you take as deep a breath as you can handle to steel yourself before slowly lowering yourself down, just enough so you can pee your pants--no. so you can untie your shoes. but you peed a little, just now. did you? no you didn't. you're being paranoid. you're not pissing your pants as a grown college student, and certainly not in front of your class. you can't be, so you're not. and so you untied one shoe without leaking again (but you didn't leak, you can't have, please not here and not now). you can't handle the idea of shifting your weight onto your other knee to untie your second shoe, so you choose the worse idea of contorting yourself enough to reach the other sneakers laces in your current position, which jams your overfilling bladder into your knee in a way that definitely didn't squeeze another spurt out, no way it did. and then you stand up, gripping onto the thighs of your pants to resist your urge to grab your crotch instead as the mass inside you shifts down, pressing harder than ever.
but your waders. you need your waders. fuck.
you kick off your sneakers and grab for your chest waders and, stifling a whimper, lift your leg up like a dog who's about to pee in the grass, wouldn't that feel so nice, it all gushing out and splattering against the ground, but you're not a dog, you're a field biology student that needs to put your chest waders on and you can't afford to pee yourself like you almost did just now. and so you lift your leg and your thigh pushes even harder into your now-distended bladder as you wrangle your limb into your oversized waders, followed by your second leg and another squirt into your pants (maybe it's a good thing you're wearing waders today, so nobody can see the wet spot you think is growing on your pants now). after bending down to help pull your waders up over your legs and sensitive, bulging abdomen, kneading your bladder like a ball of dough with your stupid little "I bought the wrong size and these are too big to easily put on" dance, your clip your waders on with the buckles by your shoulders and you are ready.
and by the time you finished, everyone else had already moved past you, and you can see them several yards away already, standing around the professor as they show you some stupid fucking plant with water dripping from the roots and splashing onto the water below.
you should get a move on, so you do. and you step into the mucky slope, and it's soft. it's muck, so of course it is, it's just mud but shittier. but you're moving! you're moving and you're making it over to your class and maybe you can say you just had a ton of rocks in your show and that's why you were slow! or maybe you were getting another drink because it's so hot out today, and the thought of water, a whole gallon of it, sloshing around in a water bottle with every step just like your pee is sloshing inside you with every step, just thinking about it is making each drop of that gallon trickle into your bladder and it hurts--
and it released another spurt, much larger than it had before, as you suddenly plunge into the muck up to your hips. guess it was a steep drop into the water!
you clench down harder than you ever have in your life as you try to stop the stream and not think about that splash as you fell into the water and definitely not think about how your whole class is looking at you now. and they want you to come over, of course, so you don't hold them up even more. so you try to go over. but you cant. the muck has sucked you right in, and every time you jerk your leg to free yourself, your hold over your bladder muscles gets weaker and weaker, with every jolt of force from your leg and hips smashing into the great rock in your abdomen, jostling even more pee out of it with every move you make to try to free yourself.
and now one of your classmates is coming over to free you, and theyre splashing so much water around as they move towards you, and you can't stop peeing--you can't stop peeing? you can't stop peeing! your bladder, with a stubborn, angry shock of pain, has decided it finally had enough, and now youre helplessly filling your waterproof waders with fresh, hot pee as you look in the eyes of your classmate coming to rescue you from the muck.
how are you supposed to explain to them that you can't join the rest of your class, because your waders are so filled with your pee that they're too heavy to safely walk in the water with now?
