Gee Whiz

Over the course of my 43 years I have learned a great many things about the opposite sex. I grew up with brothers, after all. But I am still puzzled by several quirks of the male species. At the top of that list is potty stops. For the life of me I do not understand why it ticks a man off to make a restroom stop when traveling by car. Hubby and I were driving to the airport the other morning when I told him I needed to stop. It’s a two hour drive and I thought I could make it all the way, but I couldn’t. I have a bladder the size of a peanut, and have a maximum time limit of an hour and a half between restroom breaks, sometimes less. Since we were driving into a large metropolitan city during rush hour, I did not want to risk getting stuck in traffic with a bloated bladder. I had visions of running down an embankment and whizzing on a bush. I didn’t want half of greater Nashville seeing my naked backside so, with about twenty minutes left in our drive, I asked him to pull over. You would have thought I’d asked him to paint my toenails. “Oh, my God! Can’t you wait just a little longer? We are almost there. It’s just a few more miles to the airport, surely you can wait.” “No. No, that’s why I’m asking you to pull over. It won’t take but a minute.” “Oh, alright, if we HAVE to.” (Insert vigorous huffing and puffing here.)

Now, this is the reaction I get every time we travel by car for any significant distance, and I have to pee. It’s the reaction I used to get from my dad when I was a kid. It’s also the reaction Hubby’s father used to give his family. In fact, just about every male I’ve ever traveled with, has had that kind of reaction. Women don’t do that. If I were traveling with a group of women and one of them asked to pull over, the driver would respond with a big “Sure, honey” and pull over at the nearest exit. Women don’t mind. We understand. Men mind. In fact, they get right down grumpy about it. Hubby’s mood can turn south in a heartbeat with the mere mention of a pee stop. “But I was making good time,” he says. “I’ll lose this Cadillac with the fuzz buster. It will slow us down.” “Yeah, well we’re going to slow down plenty if I pee all over this front seat,” I tell him. He stops, but I have to listen to a whole bunch of grumbling and huffing during the entire stop and another twenty minutes of “we’ll never make up that time” after we get back in the car.

I just don’t understand. It’s not like I take a long time in the restroom. Unlike a lot of women, I get in and get out. No primping, no lipstick, just a pee, a flush and a hand wash. I don’t even take my purse in with me. I want to get to our destination as quickly as Hubby does. Do Nascar drivers get this mad when they have to make a pit stop? If so, that would explain why there are no women in the pit crews. Are men born with a gene that causes them to get mad when they have to stop? If so, THAT would explain why they won’t stop and ask for directions, either.