The Nurse's Office

Being a kid who unknowingly had the budding symptoms of OCD and anxiety disorder, I was a little lost on some of the well known do's and don'ts of society.

For instance, don't change your shirt in an empty hallway just because the bathroom stalls look scary.

My teacher caught me doing this in second grade, and her eyes widened so much I thought they would roll right off her head.

Needless to say, she wasn't too happy about seeing a timid Dora the Explorer doppelgänger frantically throwing on some clothes by her locker. I don't know what was going through my head that day, but somehow changing out there made more sense than anything else.

Apart from this cringe-worthy memory, I have ones that are even worse.

For the majority of my childhood, I was always the one to wet my pants VERY easily.

I never liked going into the school bathrooms because I had this underlying fear that I would lock myself into a stall and never come out. To keep this dreadful thought away, I would hold the urge to use the bathroom for long periods of time. Developing this bad habit would affect me for years into the future, and would sometimes cost me the social approval of my elementary school.

Any sudden laughing fit or nervous tick would send my bladder into an emergency response! Which is what lead to my many embarrassing incidents as a child during recess, church service, lunctime, etc.

After so many times of wetting my pants, I had to leave a fresh pair of pants and underwear at the nurses office every week. To my surprise, I became a regular in there. Almost every other week, I had random moments of weakness in which I soiled my pants. Even though I was expecting it to go away one day, it remained a pretty big problem.

The most vivid memories of this happening include: wetting myself while going down a sledding hill at recess, while on the swings, and in the middle of a school play. Blegh.

Not only is this gross to think about, but just really unfortunate.

Each time that I wet my pants, I had to think of new ways to be slick about it. With great effort, I had to hide the stain while running to the office.

This avoidance tactic was something I soon became a master at. In the blink of an eye, I would already be slithering away from my friend group to head by the nurse. Oblivious to my pain, no one could figure out what was wrong which gave me an advantage. Being unscathed by my class's harsh ridicule, I usually made it to the office safely more times times than not.

However, there was one incident in particular that almost caught the attention of my entire grade.

What reigns supreme in my long term memories?

The Gym Class Abomination

dun... dun... dun!!

Third grade was a better year than some, but I would still wet my pants a good number of times throughout the school year.

This embarrassing moment happened during a calm period, right before the biggest waves of humiliation crashed into me yet again. It was the last month of school, and the whole class gathered around the basketball court to play with a parachute.

Naturally, I drank a lot of water and juice over lunch. Being a complete fool, I got used to walking on thin ice with my bladder control.

During gym class, my friends and I were laughing away and having fun. In between parachute games, we were making a ton of jokes about how ridiculous it was that we had to run. The game our class was playing made it so that if the parachute came down before you got to the other end, you were stuck under there for the rest of the game.

Dodging around another person running, I began to laugh more and more...

Mhm, you already know what's about to happen here!

On my turn to run, I was giggling uncontrollably and saw my friends at the other end of the parachute, laughing as I had to slide on my knees to make it through.

But, I didn't make it to the other end. The flood gates had given way, and I had left a large streak of pee across the gymnasium hardwood floor.

Upon this realization, my 9 year old self had begun to get nervous. Not only did I pee myself again, but it was in a clear line across the floor and under the parachute for ALL to see!

"How was I going to hide this? Now what?" I thought to myself.

But here is a complete twist that not even I could have predicted would have saved me:

Another girl in the class was complaining of nausea at the time, and was extremely ill during the game. Lucky for me, her condition became worse which caused the whole class to stop the game. She told the teacher that she wasn't sure if she had thrown up somewhere, which gave me a chance to turn my situation around!

Deciding to be a snake, my 9 year old brain figured it would be best to blame the mysterious liquid on her. In a matter of minutes, the janitor was already on his way to clean up the spill and I was not even looked at as the culprit! Because everyone assumed that she was sick, no one questioned the streak of unknown fluid on the floor.

To my utter amazement, I WAS SAVED!!!!

In the end, I had avoided being shamed and forever cast aside as a weirdo.

While I knew it wasn't right, I figured that maybe it wasn't horrendous to blame my accident on her sickness. The nauseous girl went to the office, my skirt had no detectable stain, and I got the mess cleaned up without leaving a trace of evidence to point back to me!

No one in the class really paid attention after the floor was cleaned, and I remember breathing a massive sigh of relief.

Once again, I had made it out without a scratch. Only wet pants.

In conclusion, I don't know if my weak bladder was a curse or a sign that I was great at being a wallflower. Even though this doesn't happen to me anymore as a 23 year old, I hope I can be just as sneaky if it ever creeps up again!