Oh the holidays and their stories, right? Well, every Thanksgiving Eve, I’m reminded that somewhere between Dallas and a little town in Oklahoma, a family is sitting around their dining room table and one of them says to another, “Hey, Jim. You remember that Thanksgiving when the girl peed in our driveway?” And Jim says, “Yeah, Bob. That was hilarious.” And then everyone laughs because the story of the girl who peed in the driveway never gets old.

Well, here’s my version…

I was a bartender/college student living in Dallas and had to drive to my brother’s house in Oklahoma for the holiday. Because I spent so much money on booze, I mean books, I had to work my regularly scheduled lunch shift on Wednesday but planned to leave directly from the bar and make the three hour drive.

So the lunch shift flies by, I jump in my T-bird, and start on my three hour drive. I should add that this period of my life revolved a lot around my fairly serious coke addiction. Not the powder stuff. The brown, liquid, bubbly stuff. A few minutes into the drive, I hit up a drive-thru for my fix and slurp down the largest coke I can get my hands on as I sing at the top of my lungs with Janis Joplin about me and Bobby McGee.

Then we stop. Not singing. Driving. Stop. No movement. Brake lights. And all of a sudden, just like that, I have to pee. Thanks, Coca cola.

I pound on my steering wheel then calmly breath in and out thinking that it’s probably just a wreck and that we’ll be heading North again in no time, but no, no such luck. We sit forever. FOREVER until finally we start moving, only we’re not going North on the highway, we’re exiting and heading into the middle of nowhere, and it starts to rain. By this time, I’m sitting on my foot, freaking out that I am going to have a serious bladder explosion all over myself, telling myself over and over that there will definitely be a Dairy Queen at the next corner, or a gas station, or ANYTHING, but I’m on a road in the middle of flipping nowhere, and the only thing I see is millions of brake lights in front of me and head lights behind me. So I decide that I am going to turn on the next dirt road, pull over, and just squat behind my car because I have no other choice.

I see an unmarked unpaved road and turn. I drive for about 2 seconds before my bladder decides it’s time, put my car in park, jump out, and pee. And. It. Is. Heavenly. At this point, as I heave a giant sigh of relief, I look up to see that I’m not on an empty dirt road but rather in a driveway, and there’s a house with a big picture window in front and a family sitting at a dining room table, and they’re all staring at me. Oh, I should mention that I didn’t even bother to close my door, so my interior light is doing a fine job of illuminating my peeing in the driveway. Horrified and unable to interrupt the flow, I assess my situation while cursing the giant coke. I grab a pen and bang it into the hinge of my door in hopes that it will at least turn off my interior light. And by the grace of God, it works. I finish my peeing and jump back into my car. I slam my door shut ready to race off, but it flies back open. “What the hell?” I scream to myself. Then I realize that in trying to remove my spot light, I have managed to break my door, and there are people sitting at the dining room table having a nice family meal that was just interrupted by some blonde girl peeing in the rain in their driveway, and OH MY GOD! WHAT DO I DO?

I grab the same pen, say a quick prayer, and jam my pen back into the hinge at least a half a dozen times, and then…sigh…my door closes. I reverse out of the driveway, and leave the nice family a great Thanksgiving story to tell for years to come about the girl who peed in their driveway.

Happy Thanksgiving. May you experience something worth telling again next year.