"What's your earliest memory?"

An Early Memory; A Foreboding Hilarity

It was a sunny day, and I was playing in a potted plant. This was totally normal and fine: I was only about 3 years old. And this is my very first memory. Of me, Littlest Joey and Papa J, my dad. 

I was having so much fun that I didn't even notice just how much I had to pee (this would be chronic my whole life). I played and played, moving about piles of dirt from one side of the planter to another. And then it hit me: I'm no longer a small person who wears a diaper. I am a small person who pees in a toilet. And my brain is signaling to me that now is the time. So I took off quick and fast, realizing it was now or...

NOW.

At the threshold of the bathroom door, I peed, right then and there. Another four feet, and I would have made it, but I didn't quite think this at the time because I didn't yet understand physical measurements. What I did know, however, was that I was now soaking wet from the waist down. And this was unpleasant.

I called for my dad, who seemed surprisingly calm under the circumstances. Of course, he'd help clean me up! There was a problem, though -- he could not bathe me in the washroom like normal times because he had to keep a lookout from the kitchen window.

You see, the septic tank custodians were visiting, conducting their annual clean sweep of our very rural life. We didn't have a sewage system like cities have; we had a deep well dug out where, when we flush things away, they go out into this below-ground cavity and sit in wait. Once a year someone comes to empty it, a glorious day for Papa J! My dad's need to watch them from the kitchen window seemed normal enough to me -- I had just peed my pants. What did I know?

(What I didn't know was just how incredibly hilarious it was: that pee and other business was literally being sucked away, from underground, while I was adding to the general urine-scape, above ground.)

And so there we were: a pantsless three-year-old Joey bathing in the stainless steel kitchen sink. At the same time, Papa J looked beyond the window pane to make sure that the septic tank people were doing the business of their business. And the day continued to be sunny. And Littlest Joey continued to play in plants and hold her pee for far too long, albeit with a little more bladder control.