We’ve all been there: long road trip, someone else is driving — and nature calls.
Phoenix writer Barbara VanDenburgh remembers that well.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: The views out the passenger side window were beautiful. We took a winding path through the majestic vistas of the red rock mountains and grand plateaus of northern Arizona. Big, puffy clouds cast rich purple shadows on the vast earth, no civilization (and no bathrooms) as far as the eye could see.
It would have taken my breath away if only I didn’t have to pee so badly.
We were a few hours into our drive from Phoenix to Provo, Utah. I was assigned the trip’s DJ but had forgotten my CD case at home, and now we were stuck listening to Vince Gill, who was warbling about domestic squabbles and tractors when my guts clenched.
My eyes darted to gas gauge. I was determined to hold it until we stopped for gas. It was a Mustang, not exactly known for fuel efficiency. How long could it possibly take?
But time moves differently on the bladder’s clock.
My best friend’s mother had warned me about this when she’d picked me up at dawn. “Did you go to the bathroom?” she’d asked as I ducked into her cherry-red muscle car.
“Yes,” I’d lied.
“I hate stopping on road trips,” she’d said, taking a theatrical sip of Mountain Dew from her comically large Big Gulp. “I don’t want you bugging me to stop.”
She was imposing for a 4-foot-something Mormon mother of six, a former farm girl who regaled us with stories over dinner about how she grew up eating cow brains.
I was nervous to spend 10 hours alone with her — and just as nervous to be reunited with my best friend after months apart. It was disorienting, to be nervous of the person with whom you once felt most at home. We’d danced in a movie theater parking lot singing songs from “Moulin Rouge,” for God’s sake.
I was 20 then, living with my parents, lonely and lost as I’d ever been. She didn’t seem lost, though. A path had been provided for her that she embraced. It had taken her to Provo. Soon it would take her on a mission to a place too far away for road trips, and eventually out of my life. I was too young to know that most friendships don’t last forever, even those built on a foundation of mutual attraction to Ewan McGregor.
“You forgot to go this morning, didn’t you?”
Lost in thought, I’d been squirming in my seat, hands clasped to my belly. I nodded sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She threw up her hands, eyes scanning for the next exit. “You forgot to pee, you forgot the CDs! What, did you forget your underwear, too?”
We pulled over at the first gas station, my friend’s mom topping off the tank and refilling her Big Gulp as I emptied mine. But as I walked back to the car, a new pain was twisting in my gut, an awful realization.
I had, as it turned out, indeed forgotten my underwear. My friend would get a kick out of that.
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