Why is it Embarrassing to Wet Your Pants?

 

This picture doesn’t have much to do with this blog, except that I like it, it features a bathroom, and it could direct you to my book Where Tigers Belch. On top of that I was born in the Chinese Year of the Tiger.

 

“I laughed so hard I wet my pants.”

Well, that’s allowed. It must have been a good joke.  But any other time, it’s embarrassing.

And nobody wants to be wet.

Most parents are patient in training their child to pee in the prescribed place, and not to soil their underwear. Yet somehow it became shameful to have an accident. I remember a poor little girl in my second grade who, standing at the front of the room, wet her pants, and as she was dressed in the required skirt, the entire class saw the water splatter. What frightened that little girl so badly it scared her bladder? The teacher was a nun, and we students couldn’t imagine a nun ever going to the bathroom. Every child in the room was happy it had not happened to them. I bet every child of that class remembers it to this day.

Then you wonder how the rocket launch of a baby going through the birth canal can leave all the cables intact. You know, before birth control, women were having 10 -12 maybe more babies. Babies were “Gifts from God,” but a fertile couple who had many children, were considered poor and uneducated. (And kept poor because of all the mouths they had to feed.) The pressures we put on women—like the rape/incest, no abortion/the two wrongs don’t make a right attitude.

I read that Eleanor Roosevelt, being Catholic, used staying away from her husband as a means to avoid another pregnancy. In the first decade of their marriage, Eleanor was pregnant five times, four within the first four years. She had six children. It took a heavy toll physically and emotionally. When one of their children died in infancy, Eleanor fell into such deep mourning that she later wrote of feeling a bitterness toward her husband for a time.

My dear dentist boss sent a dozen roses to his mother on his birthday as thanks for not stopping after 10 babies, for he was the 11th. And his mother was a little woman. I’m not saying that any person born should not be here.  I’m into choices.

But I was talking about incontinence—that is, lack of bladder control.

Why am I talking about incontinence? Well, it’s on my mind. And I am reading the book the Bath Room Key by Kathryn Kassai (A Physical Therapist) and Kim Perelli—that is information on strengthening the pelvic floor. If we can talk about religion, politics, traumas, fears, how to become better people, or how to become enlightened, a good How- to book would be How-To avoid Wet Pants. Plus we can learn not to laugh or ridicule a person who has a wetting accident; first, you scare them, and then you laugh at them. Ridicule is one of the most feared punishments.

In tribal times, ridicule often became ostracization. A person kicked out of the tribe, essentially became lion fodder. Same with wild horses. Their worst fear is being pushed out of the herd.  And that is why they can become herd-bound. It’s instinctual.

Isn’t it amazing that animals, especially dogs, can train their bladders to wait until the door opens for them to go outside?

Dogs of working people usually manage being indoors for eight hours. And a cat can hold it until he reaches the potty box.

Why is human lack of bladder control such a widespread problem? Although I have learned that it always has been to some degree, just hidden. Some African cultures send a woman to her own hut when she becomes incontinent because she has an odor. (Lack of water for cleanliness?)

It is predicted that in China, for this year 2025, adult diapers will outsell baby diapers.

Incontinence isn’t only a woman’s problem. Although men are more apt to tell their doctors they have a bladder problem sooner than women. Women, on average, hide incontinence for 8 years before telling their doctors. Women struggle with pads, waking numerous times in the night, frequent trips to the bathroom, mapping out where store bathrooms are, fearing or avoiding some social activities like dancing. Geesh, before babies, I could flip on a trampoline and ride a horse’s trot.

And then there was a boy in my peripheral family who was repeatedly struck with a belt or a rubber hose to beat the bed-wetting out of him. Don’t do that. Children aren’t wetting the bed out of laziness or disrespect. Shame and punishment don’t work. They can’t help it.

And gently teach your puppy. Don’t hit a puppy for accidents; show him outside. It takes learning to get the idea. And we can train our bladders to wait for a convenient time. (Well, some of us can.)

I’ve been reading The Bathroom Key by Kathryn Kassai (Physical therapist) and Kim Perelli, and I will put some information from it on my other website. https://goddesses50andbeyond.blogspot.com/

Bio-feedback might be a way to go. I will look into it. Probably, your doctor will tell you, “Do Kegels, Do Kegels,” until you are blue in the face. After my vision training experience where we exercise, do the drills, and be faithful to our routines, still, until we FEEL what is happening, we don’t make the mind/body connection.

More to come on this.

I Wish for You Funny or Enlightened. You Choose

The Pink Flamingo riding a motorcycle is a Christmas ornament from my daughter. It signifies that The Pink Flamingos (us) are on Sabbatical. (Vibrance Real Estate LLC.) We don't ride motorcycles, but you get the spirit of them—freedom.

Incidentally, before Christmas, I parked beside a bevy of Harley Davidson motorcycle riders, about 20 or so, at a stop light. Every one of the riders was dressed in some replica of a Santa outfit, red boots with white furry tops, lights in a Santa hat, colored lights on their bike, Santa pants—gotta show their Harvey jackets, though. They were turning to go onto the freeway, and I was going straight, so I got the full benefit of them. A girl-rider and I gave each other a thumbs up, the light turned to green, the Santa lookalikes rived their ear-splitting motors, entered an on-ramp, and disappeared down the freeway, red hats waving in their wake.

Here we are on the last day of the year, and it's Tuesday, I think—I lose track.

Remember the Christmas pageants of Jesus being born, Mary and Joseph, the Shepherds, and the wise men, all that? I was distracted a few moments ago by a fabulously funny, quirky blog by Allie Brosh titled Hyperbole and a Half. I laughed at her version of the nativity. As a kid she looked forward to the pageant—but it was lame, so she went home and enrolled grandparents, and parents into her own rousing version—yelling at the innkeeper, wise men with no gifts, baby Jesus came flying in from stage right—since she didn’t know anything about childbirth—all that. I was glad I was sitting down.

Laugh yourself into the day—let's try that tomorrow on the first day of the year. I'll try. You try, and let's see what we come up with. Let's have fun and be nice again.  

During Christmas shopping on the day before Christmas Eve, I visited Barnes and Noble Bookstore—a coffee shop in a bookstore is one of my favorite things. After upgrading my buying card, where they gave me a great canvas book bag for free, 

I sat down for a break with a cup of coffee and began reading one of their books.

To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, one day, long ago, when my husband was studying at Lindfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, we attended the student production of Inherit the Wind. I still remember the superb actor who played Clarence Darrel, the lawyer defending the science teacher, John Scopes, who was prosecuted in 1925 for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school. Darrel lost the trial but won the war—they now teach evolution in schools.

When Darrel slapped two books together, the Christian Bible and Darwin's Origin of the Species, stuck them under his arm and walked off stage, I felt I was hit by an anvil.

On some level, I knew science and religion didn't have to argue, but it took years to integrate them.

With that mindset, I picked up the book those two days before Christmas, and began reading The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes. It was the combined 1926 version and the expanded 1938 version, as heavy as the dictionary I used to carry to English class because I was a poor speller. We students would get an F on our essays if two words were misspelled. However, we were allowed to use a dictionary, and thus, I passed the class.

When I read Holmes' words, we shouldn't accept the ideas presented by some who say that the world is full of hatred and all is rotten. "Your work," he said, "is to not to go there." I silently screamed, "I need this book!"

It was an expensive book by today's standards now that we are used to Kindle versions, and that book was two inches thick, at 776 pages—but I bought it and gave it to myself for Christmas.

Let's do a little sleuthing with the help of old Ernest Holmes. Interesting last name, Holmes.

The writer of Genesis in the Christian Bible says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God."

And he made everything and it was good.

According to Holmes, great thinkers of all times have taught that we live in a threefold universe: Body, Mind, and Spirit.  I always thought that was the holistic approach to health, treating all aspects of the person, mind, body, and spirit.

Yet, all around, we see threesome aspects. In science, it is Intelligence, Substance, and Result. (Or Idea, development, success)

The Law of Attraction says, Ask, Believe, Receive.

The Trinity of the Bible says the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Bible began by saying that God was the word. If we said that the Holy Spirit is the word of God, and God the Father is the one who gets things done, then the Son would be the result.

These are models, folks. We read for fun or enlightenment—here’s a little of both.

Earlier I mentioned that the arbor in our front yard blew over. See that long package on the table? That's our new arbor. Daughter's present to me.