In the burgeoning town of Newbury, Massachusetts, somewhere around the mid-1600s, John Woodbridge VI took time away from his busy witch persecuting* schedule to act as town clerk and have a whole litter of kids, one of whom was also creatively named John Woodbridge. The latter Woodbridge was a Harvard grad, a pastor (naturally), a grammar school teacher and the fellow for whom the town's Woodbridge School was eventually named.
The school was built at the end of the 19th century initially as a two room schoolhouse and was expanded a couple of decades later to accommodate the growing population. With its semi-iconic yellow clapboarded exterior, the building has remained relatively unchanged, and since being shut down in the 1990s, isn't used for much other than a landmark for giving driving directions.
After the new elementary school was built in the 1950's, the townsfolk at some point decided that the youngest, softest, supplest, most impressionable students should go to the oldest, ricketiest, most haunted school (Woodbridge) and that the older kids should go to the state-of-the-art, shining beacon of light school with smaller amounts of health risks and terror. Character building, I suppose.
I spent my first and second grade years at the Woodbridge School and became quickly aware that the idiosyncrasies of the building abounded, none more memorable than its infamous basement. Since the walls were (presumably) made of mud and hay, the basement was almost always flooded with groundwater. Anticipating the less than desirable effects of soaking wet children roaming the halls, the engineering savants at the school exhibited their dynamism by laying elevated wooden planks in place to line the floor. Adding to the ambiance, there was one flickering light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling that provided about as much light as a birthday cake candle.
Unfortunately for anyone with a bladder, the bathrooms were located smack dab in the middle of this glowing example of basement design and technology. Descending into the bathroom, as the darkness enveloped you, you became increasingly encased by the gurgling sounds of the bowels of the building: furnaces and generators and whatever other croaking, squeaking, squawking mechanisms there were in place to keep the building from dissolving back into the earth.
The almost complete lack of light in the basement, coupled with the unbridled imagination of a 7 or 8 year old, made a trip to the bathroom a true test of courage. I can still remember teetering nervously towards the bathroom stalls via the narrow planks; my surroundings completely open to interpretation. It wasn't a far stretch to assume that the stagnant water was a limitless abyss of poop-swamp, rife with treacherous creatures just waiting to violently feast on my supple flesh. It was like hell's version of the It's A Small World ride at Disneyworld.
We had bathroom breaks twice a day. We'd all march into the creaking abyss, do our business, and be generally relieved that there was some safety in our numbers. The odds were that it wouldn't be us who would be picked off by a rogue alligator or giant pterodactyl-bat, it would be one of the other kids who hadn't raised their hand before talking or chewed gum in class. Those kids had it coming.
The problem for me, though, on one particular day, was that there would be no waiting until the bathroom break. I had slurped down my entire bowl of tomato soup at lunch and chased it with a couple of cartons of 2% milk. I was a ticking time bomb of expanding liquid.
By the time we broke off into reading groups, I was squirming around in my chair trying desperately to find some position that would provide even the shortest moment of relief. My teacher eventually noticed my unusual amount of disruptive wiggling and queried, "Magen, do you need to go to the bathroom?"
I momentarily stopped wiggling, shocked that someone had burst unannounced into my private world of painful pee thoughts.
"N-no..."
My response was barely audible. I knew if I spoke any louder, the pee would be forced out by the extra vocal exertion. It was in that quiet response that I knew I was committed. I would let my bladder burst before I made the journey to that bathroom alone. I had too much life left to live to get preyed on by an evil mega-toad lying in wait in an old bathroom. I wasn't going out like that. I had to make it to the break.
My resolve began to falter by the time we had started our math lesson. I was being asked to add some nickels, dimes and quarters together and beads of sweat were forming on my brow. I never liked math, but this was a different beast altogether. The chair squirming became increasingly futile and I eventually began to hallucinate. I was drawn off into a utopian world of glistening white tiled bathrooms, sparkling latrines, fluffy toilet paper, and toilet brushes that came to life and sang to you while you sat on the toilet...
Then, in a brief moment of what I mistook for lucidity, it hit me. I couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to me sooner. It was such a perfect, unflawed plan.
Maybe I could just let a little bit out. Just the tiniest little raindrop of pee would provide such an immense relief! I'd even be dry by recess!
And so it went.
Crazy with the relief that the droplet provided, it wasn't long until the full deluge was released and creeping its way across the old, wooden floor.
Someone must have informed the teacher, but I didn't care. The warm, wet bliss of relief had enveloped me. It wasn't until I smelled the sprinkling of sawdust that I was wrenched out of my euphoric coma. My teacher was standing over me asking if I had a change of clothes. "NO!" I shouted my back to her, relieved that I could finally speak at normal volumes and was no longer a prisoner of my swelling bladder. She informed me that I'd need to go to the nurse and call my mom.
I sloshed my way down the hall to the nurse's office, and, as if a urine-soaked 7 year old required a great deal of deciphering, explained the situation to the nurse and asked to use the phone. When my mom arrived with an extra dry pair of clothes, I reiterated my explanation of what had happened, further cluing everyone in to the mystery of the saturated, pee-smelling clothes. I changed my clothes, apologized enthusiastically to them both, and skipped back to class.
The embarrassment of publicly peeing myself was a small price to pay for relief. The sideways glances from my peers bounced off me like bullets off of Superman. I wasn't the first person to pee my pants between those four walls and would certainly not be the last. It would be old news by recess. When the second bathroom break rolled around and everyone else trudged down the stairs, reflecting on their short lives on this planet and hoping to stave off their imminent doom, I stayed at my desk with a thin, smug smile on my face. Not this time, I thought.
Not this time.
