Poise and Composure at the Doctor

Today, I went to the doctor for a check-up, but made the mistake of going to the bathroom ahead of the appointment, forgetting that I had to give a urine sample (no, I am not an athlete that has been selected for random testing). The personnel in the clinic needed a sample and suggested that I wait around until my body decides that it is time to go again.

So, in the waiting room, the youngest patient around - me - all dressed up in his little lawyer-suit and tie, decided to speed things up a bit, for work was beckoning. Next to me was a water dispenser and a pile of unused plastic cups. I took one of the cups and realized that it was quite a small container. As I bent down to reach the dispenser handle, I filled the cup with water, and started my "fast-track" mission to expedite the production of this oh so important urine sample. I took my first drink, and realized that it was like taking only a double-shot in quantity. So, I bent over again, to fill the cup once more. While the refreshing feeling of drinking the water affirmed to me that the enjoyability factor was working, the disappointing lack of "sensation" in my bladder started to tell me that a couple of double-shots were far from sufficient to get the job done.

So I kept on bending down, filling up my cup and drinking, bending down, filling up my cup and drinking. Eventually, there was just complete silence in the waiting room, except the sound of a plastic dispenser being moved, water pouring onto a cup and me gulping in the liquid. The older patients around just stared at me and maintained a smirk as if to say, "Hehehe. The kid has to pee..." I just looked at them and said with my eyes and fake smile, "how you doin' folks? Minding your own business?" The lab technician and receptionist also took notice of my attempt to drain this water dispenser of the supply that someone will surely need after me, but did not say anything presumably because they did not want to humiliate me, or they just didn't care.

There was a chair next to the dispenser, so I tried sitting down to be less inconspicuous with my mission of the hour. Alas, it was too far and cumbersome a reach for me to sit down with my legs crossed and reach over to fill my cup again between 10-second intervals (the time it takes me to finish my cup). So, I stood up every 15 seconds or so refill and then realized that people were staring in amusement. In a defensive reactionary move, I then picked up a Sports Illustrated to read on my lap to make it look like I was not the least bit embarassed about the situation, but realized that was stupid too, as I had to put the magazine down every 15 seconds to stand up, making me look even more idiotic as I fetched more water from the well. At the end of it all, I decided to go back to my standing-around-the-water-dispenser-and-bending-down-to-refill-my-cup routine like a dude in a bar alone drinking shots quickly and pretending that he had friends or a date showing up to keep him company.

It didn't help that a personnel member went up to me several cups later and handed me a sample cup saying in front of everyone, "sir, please fill this up when you are ready."

It finally took me maybe a gallon of water or 12 double-shots of H2O to get me going. That my friends is my urine story of the day.