My friends, over the past two weeks it has been above 90 every day in the wonderful town of Sioux Falls. It has been miserable, and, I cannot stress this enough, you need to stay hydrated!
(Seamless transition) Speaking of staying hydrated, would you like to hear a story about drinking water?
Spoiler alert: We’re talking about bodily functions here. As J-Schram would say, “This isn’t private school appropriate.” You have been warned!
Every couple years I need to do something adult to remind myself that I’m a grown man and make my parents proud of me. Obviously the big one was buying a house, but that’s kind of like the pinnacle. I don’t really have a purpose for a second house, so I needed to get creative with ways to prove myself as an adult. Luckily, one of my friends and the greatest college athlete I know sold his soul and started selling life insurance. I thought, “This is a great opportunity to see how much I’m worth dead.” Jk, but it’s something that I guess I need because adults have it.
I would plug homeboy’s insurance company right now, but he quit like two months after selling it to me. And the guy who runs my account now is also a friend from college, but he’s a total tool so he gets no love.
So I signed up for life insurance with a man for whom I once created a parody Twitter account about his hair. Everything is going great. I buy a $100,000 policy, and homeboy tells me, “I think that’s it. Since it’s a small policy, we don’t have to do drug testing or anything.” Well, the joke’s on me. Two weeks later he calls me and says, “Hey, you actually have to get drug tested. Here’s the name of the testing company in Sioux Falls.”
I wasn’t looking forward to the whole experience, mainly because I knew I’d have to take at least an hour after work for the whole fiasco. But it was actually pretty pleasant. They didn’t call me to make an appointment. They just texted me with days that would work. They could do an appointment as late as 6:30, so I had to miss virtually zero minutes of work. Sanford Health, if you are reading this, just let me be able to text you when I’m coming into my doctor’s appointment. This will make the experience so much more pleasant.
Monday, September 21, came. It was the day of reckoning. I could go back on the internet and look up how hot it was in Sioux Falls that day, but that sounds like a lot of work. So let me tell you, IT WAS HOT! Way too hot for September. If you told me it was 95 that day, I would believe you. Now normally I do a pretty good job of staying hydrated during the workday, but I remember this day was uncharacteristically hot for September, and I was very dehydrated.
I got home at about 6:00 and had an appointment five minutes from my house at 6:30. It didn’t leave me as much time as I wanted to get ready, but sometimes we take what we can get. The first thing I did the second I walked in the door was fill up my 28-ounce Batman blender bottle with ice cold water, and I chugged it like I was a 21-year-old with a Busch Light. Immediately I had to pee. My initial thought was, “I can hold this for 20 minutes and then just be right away at the testing place.” I took about two steps, and my bladder said, “Sorry, buddy, you are peeing right now.” I think all 28 ounces of the Batman cup went straight through me, and I had an empty bladder again. I subbed out my shower beer for another 28 ounces of ice water so cold it’d make Wall Drug jealous. I started to immediately worry that I was not gonna be able to pee again.
Just as we must walk before we run, we must also make it to our appointment before we pee. So I headed for Cherapa Place and hoped for a urinary miracle.
After the fiasco of getting into the building after normal business hours, the person administering my exam informs me that I am the last appointment of the night, so “can we hurry up and get this done so I can go home.” (She either lived in Beresford or Nebraska. Either way, find a job closer to home than Sioux Falls.)
The first thing I say to her is, “Ma’am, I am severely dehydrated. Is there any way I can get a glass of water?” She brings me a glass of water which I pound immediately. She’s like, “Do you want more?” And I reply, “I think it would be best if I had another.” We quickly get through my height, weight, and her taking my blood. Now the moment we’ve all been dreading. The urine test!
She walked me down to the bathroom. She hands me a cup and says, “Please fill this, and then use it to fill up these two vials.” There is a drinking fountain right outside the bathroom, which I drink from for about two minutes straight before entering the bathroom. I’m not feeling great, but I’ve got a ton of water in me right now, so I should be pretty good. I go into the bathroom, go to the urinal, and think that nature is going to just take its course. I’m gonna go to the urinal, pee, go home, and wait to validate I’m worth $100k dead. And that’s all we’re gonna do.
I stood there for about two minutes, and nature was not taking its course.
Do you know what? Maybe I just didn’t have enough water in me, and so I walked out and got another drink for about two more minutes at the drinking fountain. The administrator makes a comment along the lines of, “Wow, you weren’t kidding about being dehydrated.” I know that we don’t need to patronize my lack of ability to pee.
I go back in for another 2 to 3 minutes of trying my hardest to just pee. It’s at this point that my stage fright was starting to take over. I normally can’t pee with someone watching, but this was like extreme stage fright. I was holding up this lady from going home to her family all because I couldn’t pee. That added pressure was not making this situation any better. Now, I’ve done some pretty awful things in my life and have not always been a great person, but what happened next was the most shameful thing I’ve ever done…I walked out of the bathroom empty-handed a second time to get a drink.
I apologized to the administrator again, but at this point it was no longer cute. She gave me a look that could only be interpreted as, “Have you ever drank water before this moment? This isn’t funny anymore.”
After three minutes of practically making out with the water fountain, I now had a gut ache from drinking half of the clean water in eastern South Dakota. I walked back into the bathroom where I would either walk out with a jar of my own piss (the one swear for the blog), or God would let me die on the second floor of the Cherapa Place building.
I thought maybe I wasn’t relaxing enough, so I turned in my man card and tried sitting down. That wasn’t helping much, so I kept brainstorming on ways to help me finally finish this task. I thought maybe the sound of running water was all the encouragement I would need to finally fill this jar. I listened to the sound of a babbling brook for about two minutes. It doesn’t work. A thunderstorm doesn’t work. A roaring river doesn’t work. All hope is lost.
As I’m planning how I can escape this building through the air ducts and not have to face this woman a third time with an empty jar, my stomach starts to rumble. I’m thinking, “Ok, if I poop, I’m going to pee, so this will be fine. Everyone will be happy. It will be the weirdest pee in a jar story ever, but I’m the only one who knows about it so that’s fine.”
As much as I’d like to say I took a normal poop and a pee to follow, that did not happen. Oh, it was just straight up water that came out of my butt. (sorry for being graphic) You have got to be kidding me. I just drank 2 gallons of water in 10 minutes, and I don’t even pee it out, it comes out my butt! Who is in charge of this cruel joke?
To add insult to injury, the proctor of the exam is now talking to somebody outside the door. He asked her if she was still working, and she said, “Yes, this is the longest I’ve ever had to wait for someone’s urine test.” At this point I am emotionally exhausted. All I wanna do is cry and go home, but I know if I cry that’s taking even more water out of my body that could be urine so that is not an option.
After what seemed like an eternity more, but was probably closer to four minutes, I finally was able to dribble out half an ounce of the brownest urine you’ve ever seen. I walk over to the sink with my half an ounce of pee and ever so gently pour it into the vials and wash my hands. Like an athlete that just lost a state championship, I walked out the bathroom with my head up and pride in what I had just accomplished, but shame because it did not go the way I wanted it to. I hand her the two vials, apologize for what seemed like the 9,001st time, and go on my way. She lets out a chuckle and says, “Well, I’ve never had to wait that long before. Have a good night.”
So I’ve reached the part of the story where you want some cute conclusion, and I make a reference to something that happened earlier in the story. Sorry, but that’s not here. The only thing I can say is, “Please stay hydrated and don’t pee before your urine test.”
bteamballer 