I peed there

 

When you gotta go, you gotta go. Some people are known for their ability to “hold it” a long time between restroom breaks, while others can set a timer to their urination tendency. Young boys are notorious for being frequent urinaters. For whatever reason, they have to pee a lot. Blame it on their tiny bladders, or proclivity to drinking soda pop, but they whiz with a frequency greater than any other age group. When I was little I could fill a gallon jug every 4 hours. Just like the little boy in the Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy, I couldn’t go more than 11 minutes without having to take a leak. This was problematic for the road trips my family took every few months. I was always halting our momentum on the highway, needing us to take a pit stop. Eventually my parents got sick of finding a rest stop or highway-side McDonalds every time I needed to water the flowers, so they resorted to pulling over on the side of the road for me. I can remember countless trips in the family mini-van when I had to ask my dad to pull over on the side of the highway, nature was calling. I would open the sliding door, use the mini-van as a shield from onlookers, and release. Then repeat the process 30 miles down the road.

Metaphorically holding my bladder

We would take a lot of road trips when I was younger, thus I did my business in many places. At some point my dad came up with the joke that I hadn’t officially traveled to a place until I had peed there.  If I had never dropped my trousers at a new destination, it was as if I had never been in that region. When our road trips crossed state lines, I wasn’t officially in that state until I had gone to the bathroom. “Welcome to Florida!” my Dad would shout out the mini-van door, while I was taking care of business. Whenever we flew to distant destinations I made sure to hunt down a restroom at any layover airports. Instead of a travel bucket list, I was checking places off my travel urinal list. Just as a dog claims his territory on every tree and fire hydrant, I marked my presence across North America. I peed in the troughs lining the men’s bathroom at old Tiger stadium in Detroit, I sprayed the grass alongside the Big Sur Coast Highway in California, and I wrote my name in the snow while overlooking the Saint Lawrence Seaway in eastern Quebec.

 

I actually maintain the same mentality to this day. These days I travel a lot further, and more often. I always try to stay at hostels in order to meet and spend time with fellow travelers. Inevitably, the question “Where have you been?” comes up. I always think back to my dad’s joke, that I can only tell the tale of the places I’ve relieved myself. I used a toilet while I was in Tokyo, but not while I was in Manila so I can’t mention that city.

It’s a silly habit, but all travelers have their quirks. Some backpackers take a “jumping” picture in front of landmarks, some travelers collect postcards from all their destinations, and some write blog entries recounting their impressions of worldly locations. As for me, when I list off the names of international landmarks and sights, I can always say I peed there.