I had a couple of traits going for me when I was a kid that I still possess to this day.  Two of them that I want to speak about today are focus and efficiency.  Efficiency and focus.

Let me explain.  I’m a writer, an aspiring writer at least.  It takes real focus to sit at a computer and write for six straight hours every day without smashing your coffee mug and carving out your jugular with the shattered fragments.  I have this Rainman ability to zero on something and isolate myself on the task that is nearly neurotic.  I wrote about this trait to set aside even physical pain and crippling deformity in my column about Warcraft II.

At the same time, I feel that my mind is always looking for efficiency.  This is one of the reasons that I had some success in online marketing in my past life … that is before I realized that I was too busy kissing client ass rather than doing anything cool on the Internet.  When I drive with my wife through Melbourne, I always breakout the map and look for new, faster ways to get from point A to point B.  My wife hates it … until I find a quicker route.  I love it, I live for it.

Then it makes sense that as a small lad living in my grandma’s house I came up with a time-saving method.  This was probably when I was about five or six years old.  I had this manic focus and in those days it was He-Man, GI Joes, Gobots, and RPGs.  I would literally go without eating or sleeping until I was ready to collapse, romping around in my imaginary world with Leader-1 and Storm Shadow, blissfully unaware of the fading day or changing seasons.

Now of course, there are other, more pressing biological considerations that disturbs one’s focus and that is going to the bathroom.  There isn’t much you could do to stave off those needs, other then literally pinching your hose with your fingers.  But as you well know playing with action figures one-handed is indeed a limited playing experience.

So … I devised a time-saving idea.  Aiming the wang involved a lot of time wasted, which was the perfect opportunity for greater efficiency.  Aha!  I developed a plan.  I would play until the very last moments, letting the pressure build up within my bladder until it was painful and I was not only do the pee-pee dance, I was doing the Urine Electric Slide.  Then, I would undo my zipper, slide down my pants, grab my weenie, pinch it off … and then and ONLY then would I run off to the bathroom secure in the knowledge that I was physically restraining my golden blaster with my hand.

This made sense for two big reasons:

1. I was able to play on average 20 to 30 MORE seconds each time nature called because I would wait past the point of no return.  If I didn’t pre-ready my dingie with the hand clamp then I would undoubtedly wet myself with the first step.

2. Because my weanie was already in hand, aimed and ready, I wouldn’t have to waste time in the bathroom.  I was saving those precious seconds in the playroom where of course time mattered most.

See my brilliance?  See my ingenuity?  Well, I guess it goes without saying that I played alone a lot during those days.

So for a few weeks that summer, my plan was operational and working perfectly.  My mom never noticed and my grandma probably agreed with me.  She was … afterall … old and probably combating her own bladder problems.  God rest her soul.

But it all changed when my dad was over for a visit.  You see he and my mom were either divorced or separated or having a punch-up or something, because he was rarely ever over at my Grandma’s house.   So I was playing and the below the belt urge sprung up.  I waited until it hurt.  I waited until my bladder surged like a balloon about to pop.  Just like the spice miners in Dune waiting for the carry-all.  I played until the very last moment and when I couldn’t stand another second, I flipped out my willy into a tight grasp and jetted downstairs to the bathroom.

This time however I ran right in front of my dad, dashing around him like a prepubescent Barry Sanders.  The look of sheer surprise and near panic that crossed his face instantly told me that I was doing something bad, something inappropriate.  As I got into the bathroom and unleashed the yellow rocket stream, I furrowed my brow in confusion and contemplation.  Despite the genius of my idea, it was … not normal.

Looking back, I can only imagine what the hell my dad was thinking.  Here comes his youngest son with a determined look on his face, holding his junk like a bull-rider tied to the saddle.  Part of me wonders if his shock was in fear that I was going to hose him down as I passed.  Of course, most of my childhood is filled with such endeavors or ideas … so he couldn’t have been THAT surprised, right?  Right?

My dad never spoke a word of the events that transpired on that fateful summer day.  There was an innate understanding that we would both maintain our silence, as if the memory was too horrible to relive.  I immediately abandoned my method, never again to do the Grip-n-Run.  Who knows how many seconds were wasted in my youth afterwards.

I wonder now as I write these words so many years later if pushing my bladder to the limit, near to bursting, has adversely affected me as I have grown older.  Like an old football player struggling with bad knees or a retired concert pianist with tunnel carpal syndrome.  Maybe that would explain why I now have to pee every 20 minutes.

…

Oh wait, I’ll be right back.  Nature calls.