I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this old friend of mine, who I let slip through my fingers because of my thickheaded stubbornness. I will always think about her now, because her birthday is the same as my daughter’s, October 9th. I concentrated really hard, and willed my daughter to be born on her due date, which was October 1st, or ANY day except the 9th- but she just wouldn’t do it. She waited so long she actually lost weight in utero, and was a skinny little newborn Spud. But I digress; I was talking about my friend.

As I’ve mentioned before, I was a teenaged hoodlum. At the beginning of my senior year, my friend turned eighteen, and her drug-dealing boyfriend gave her a three-foot bong that she was eager to break in with me. While the other kids were off having burgers for lunch, my friend and I were having big lungfuls of smoke, chased by Doritos and whatever else we could find in her car.

The first day we planned to use the bong was crisp and cool, a pleasant fall day in Illinois. I was slightly nervous because I had never used a bong before- I was afraid I would splash water on my pants or otherwise make an ass of myself. My friend also told me that with a bong you take in larger amounts of smoke and can become more intoxicated, which also made me wonder if I would be able to make it back for sixth period.

“It’s fun, you’ll like it,” she reassured me as we were leaving school. Then we ran into a good friend of mine, Jeff, who was with a theater nerd that I had slept with once the previous winter. It was a classic case of “good phone sex, bad real sex” and I had been working like mad to avoid him since then. He was constantly hinting to my friends that he was completely stunned that I had stopped calling him. I had given up having sex with guys at my school since I tended to intimidate them with my take-no-prisoners attitude about sex which led to…performance issues…once we both had our clothes off. Plus, it took me a couple of tries to determine that 16 year-old guys have NO IDEA what they’re doing in the first place, and I was too impatient to be anyone’s trainer.

Anyway, both of the guys wanted to come along and my friend said she was glad to have them with us, without so much as glancing at me first. I was happy to have Jeff come with us, anyway. I was kind of uncomfortable around the other fellow because he was a walking reminder of what an Asshole I was.

Off we went to the park; my friend sparked up the bong in her car and we began passing it around. We were at a vantage point so we could see if anyone was coming down the long entrance road. No one was around; my friend and I had a tacit agreement to make sure there were never any little kids playing nearby when we got high at parks.

I was immediately floored and completely baked.

“Fuck, I’ll never make it back to sixth period now.” We sat around chatting idly and giggling until it was time to go. I got edgier and edgier because of the guilt and awkwardness that I was feeling about the guy I had one-night stand-ed until I got downright paranoid. He was being so nice and charming; I really should have given him some explanation, I thought.

My friend asked me to step out of the backseat so she could wedge the bong back under the seat. As I stood up, I was laughing really hard. I’ve always had a weak bladder; I HATED being tickled too much when I was a little kid because I would wet my pants. It was the same with just laughing. I tried to stop laughing, and I just couldn’t until…

My God, did I just wet my pants? It certainly felt like I did. Everything suddenly felt warm and wet and I was so dizzy from being high I sat down in the car seat and didn’t say a word. My heart raced and I thought of a million things that would happen if they all found out. My two close friends would be cool about it, and wouldn’t tell anyone. But the other guy…he had all the reasons in the world to tell the entire school what had happened.

The ride back to school was fairly short, but it felt like it took about three years. Everyone else chit-chatted and my friend kept glancing at me in her rearview.

“Are you okay, Asshole?” she asked, cocking the mirror so she could see my whole face. “You look really pale.”

The guys in the car turned to look at me as well. I gave her a stiff little nod and went back to slumping in the corner and looking out the window. They resumed their conversations, and I was completely convinced that they all KNEW that I had wet my pants, and were just trying to act like they didn’t know, because they were trying to make me feel comfortable. I hated them for this, somehow.

We got out of my friend’s car and I made a beeline for mine. I had to get home because of course I couldn’t walk around at school with wet pants.

“I’m goin home, see ya later,” I mumbled to my friend, who watched me walk away with a puzzled look on her face.

“Okay…see you tomorrow.”

I felt floaty, paralyzed almost. My fingertips tingled. The drive home was even closer than the park (about a mile), and was through quiet neighborhoods so I wasn’t worried about driving it. I was never so glad to be home. Without even taking my pants or my coat off, I collapsed on the couch and feel into a deep but brief sleep that always came on when I had one of my little paranoiac fits.

When I awoke, I felt completely normal, but a little bit fuzzy. I remembered what had happened and I took off my pants. I had only been asleep for about twenty minutes, so they should have still been wet, but were bone dry. I had imagined the whole thing.

This type of paranoia only happened to me a couple of times, and was triggered by some other stress present in the situation. Obviously, the guy’s presence set me off on some other little thing. And later on I had to explain to my friends what happened because my silence made them wonder what the heck was wrong with me.

Nowadays, I usually stick to beer, which tends to only make me fat and silly.