To pee or not to pee, that is the question.
Date night...
Monday night was date night! Yes, that one night (supposedly once a week) when my wife and I schedule a rendezvous for just the two of us. This is not a night that happens by chance, let me tell you. No, we have to study the oracle (the calendar on the kitchen counter) and circumnavigate our way through both of our work shifts, our teenagers’ social agendas and the obligatory get together with the in-laws. Once safely through those troubled waters, we set sail off into the sunset for a memorable evening of witty repartee, enjoyable sustenance and mutually satisfying intercourse (sometimes social, sometimes sexual!). Ah, date night.
Last Monday we decided that we would go and see the movie The Vow. This was in part because we wanted to see it, in part because I wanted to see Rachel McAdams (whom I find very easy on the eye) and in part because we had bought General Mills cereal with free movie tickets. Hey, don’t judge me, you gotta watch the pennies you know. The plan was that I would meet my sweetheart in the city where she works after she finished her shift and we would head to the cinema together. Of course this meant that we would be driving separate vehicles home afterwards, which is not conducive to the “social intercourse” mentioned earlier, which in turn can have a negative effect on other intercourse later. Just saying.
The movie starts...
Anyhow, I digress. We ended up getting to the movies a little later than we had hoped and there was just enough time for me to grab a large coffee before heading into auditorium #6. Being a Monday night it was not very busy and we selected a spot, 3 rows from the back, in the centre of the screen. We sat down just as the previews were starting. It occurred to me at this point that I had the sensation that I might be needing to visit the washroom. The lights had already dimmed and we had just sat down, so I said to myself, “Self, you can hold it. It’s not that long a movie.” Besides, it is a pet peeve of mine when people keep exiting the theatre and you have to move to let them past. This would have been the case as another couple was already sitting on the end of our row draped all over each other. So I made the decision to stay.
A couple of minutes later, the movie began. I was soon lost in the heart warming tale of a couple who’s love is devastated by a car crash that leaves the extremely easy on the eye Paige (Rachel McAdams) with no memory of her husband (played by Channing Tatum, whom some might say is also easy on the eye, although I would not be one of them, in case you were wondering… not that you were, necessarily). The movie continued and as I watched, I drank freely of my large coffee. After about an hour of watching and drinking, it had come to my attention that my need for the bathroom had escalated to epic proportions. I found myself fighting an internal battle both figuratively and literally as to what I should do.
I just had to hold it.
“I need to go pee so badly”, I whispered romantically to my wife.
“Shh,” was the loving reply.
That settled it. I just had to hold it. I tried to switch my mind off my urinary tract and onto the big screen as I endeavoured to get lost in the plot. Paige’s husband Leo was trying to do everything within his power to help her remember the love that they had before the accident and it wasn’t working. I felt bad for him, but the truth of the matter was that I felt bad for my bladder too!
- In relation to bladder capacity, according to Britannica.com, "The desire to micturate begins at around a content of 400 ml but it can be voluntarily overridden until the content reaches 600–800 ml, equivalent to a pressure of 100 ml of water.”
Now I don’t know how much I had drunk in total but I wanted to micturate like I’d never micturated before! I squeezed my pelvic muscles, I shuffled, I wiggled, I tensed, I un-tensed, I focused, I counted, I multiplied… believe me I tried it all. I even went down the thought trail that having been married for 20 years, would my wife really be upset with me if I peed my pants in the movies?
I decided that I myself would be really upset if I peed my pants in the movies and so I leaned over to my honey and said, “I can’t hold it, I have to go!”
“Hmm,” came the considerate reply.
I dared not run for fear of leakage but I knew that I had to leave fast. I politely mumbled to the tightly wound up couple on the end of my row that I needed to get past and they reluctantly disentangled themselves.
The movie had reached a crucial point where Leo was going to confront Paige’s father about his treatment of his daughter, and everyone in the auditorium was silently engrossed in what was happening. The steps down to the front of the theatre seemed SO noisy as I made my way down and I was relived to reach the carpeted floor at the front. I hurried to the nearest washroom and did what I needed to do.
If only I had known...
As I stood there in front of the urinal, it occurred to me that I could be missing some vital part of the movie and I wouldn’t be able to go back in and ask my wife what happened. It wasn’t like we were watching it on DVD and could pause it for my excursion to the men’s room. Although I knew at the time that I had no option, it still niggled me that I could have missed something crucial to my enjoyment of the whole movie. Wouldn’t it have been nice to be able to know at what point in the movie something boring or unimportant was happening and go pee then? That would be incredible helpful.
Enter www.runpee.com
Runpee.com is a website that gives information about points in movies that are suitable for bathroom breaks. It provides you with the running time point when the suitable potty break occurs and also gives the available break length. For example, in relation to The Vow, the site tells readers that at 1 hour 10 minutes into the movie you can “runpee” for 4 minutes. It also gives you the verbal “cue” in the script as to when to leave. It goes on to give a short synopsis of what happens on screen while you are absent.
If I had known this before I went to the movies I would have been all set. At least they could have made a mobile app for it, don’t you think? Well, they did – the runpee app, available on iTunes.
The added bonus is that the site also provides information as to whether or not there is extra footage after the credits at the end of the movie. All in all, an extremely cool and useful site/app and one that would have helped me enjoy date night with my gorgeous wife in a much more relaxed manner.
