Every afternoon at 3:30 I would get on Sonters bus 10 to go home from school. The bus trip from Port Macquarie to Bonny Hills would take around 25 mins, and from the bus stop it was about a 5 min walk downhill to my house (except for days when the surf was worth a check). Every day without fail (that’s about 1200 times in the course of my high school life) my bladder would start to rumble as soon as I stepped off the bus and turned for home. It knew we were close to relief and by joves how it demanded release. The rumblings would invariably exponentially increase in intensity as we approached the back door, fumbled for the keys, and ran (fly unzipped) in a mad dash towards the downstairs toilet. I would like to say I made it without a drop spilt every time…

So tonight as I left my friends’ place in Ashgrove, after a delicious dinner of lamb cutlets, I felt the first inklings of needing to pee. In haste I took off, knowing that I had the mental fortitude to hold on till home. Everything was dandy as I rode along (my bladder, knowing that we were indeed some way off, had desisted from alluding to its state of being). As I passed the Toowong roundabout and started to head up Miskin, those all too familiar rumblings began in earnest. As if in synch with my climbing altitude, the rumblings increased in intensity. I passed the familiar turnoff of Ascog, known to the bladder and I as Storm’s street. The rumblings were in full voice and song…and then as I continued on up the hill towards Toowong, like a receding tide, the rumblings ebbed into the background again.

It appears that the part of my brain that informs my bladder of proximity to accessible toilets (and release) had not been informed by the ‘events planning’ part of my brain that we were indeed headed straight for the giddy heights of 7th Avenue and home. At least it appears that my bladder has quite a refined sense of direction and indeed knows the way to Stormy’s house. My testes while all this was going on, however, were harmlessly humming and thrumming away, oblivious to the entire situation and simply enjoying the ride while it lasted.