How an 'oops' becomes a devastation

Mark Twain once said that human beings were the only animals that blushed – or had reason to.

Far be it from me to take issue with the wisdom of Mr. Twain, for he is one of my notable literary and intellectual heroes. And, while we often deserve to turn crimson to our toenails, there are times when we are forced to blush through no fault of our own other than by having transgressed some bound of ‘acceptable’ behaviour. Sometimes for reasons beyond our control we can breach the social contract and ‘invite’ the censure of our fellows.

If we don’t exactly receive that censure, we think that we deserve to and we suffer the relentless pangs of utter mortification.

As follows is a case-in-point:

It was a bright and sunny afternoon and my wife and I were riding on a ferry from BC’s mainland to Vancouver Island, where we live. It was warm, the passage was smooth, and the decks were filled with a combination of vacationers, business people (on their ubiquitous cellphones), and others who were making the trip for a host of reasons.

We were seated at a small table enjoying a coffee – BC Ferries may produce lacklustre food, but their coffee is more than passable – and passing the 1 ½ journey quite pleasantly. As I sat I noticed a late middle-aged woman take a seat on a large life-jacket bin across from us. She hoisted herself up against the bulkhead, in the bright sun. Looks like a warm and pleasant place to sit and relax, I thought.

The woman looked troubled, however. Her eyes were teary around the rims and her face was flushed. Something was obviously distressing her. And then I realized what it was. She was wearing a pair of dark blue, Bermuda-length shorts, and she was looking down at them, then up towards the blue sky, and then down again. What was very obvious was that she had obviously wet herself. Somewhere in her passage towards the ferry she had been unable to reach a washroom in time.

Such ‘accidents’ actually happen in ferryboat context more than some might realize. People get caught in a traffic line-up, sometimes for a couple of hours or more, and there are very few options to ‘spend-a-penny’, especially for females. One woman, a businesswoman who regularly made the trip, in a letter to the editor – decrying the paucity of washroom options in the ferry queues – said that after having had two wetting accidents in as many years, she had actually taken to wearing ‘Depends’ just in case.

So, obviously this poor soul had been in a similar position. My God, I thought, how humiliating for her. My heart went out to her. Imagine how traumatizing that must be to have been forced to suffer, in a public place, what society deems to be a ‘childish accident’? Of course, we all know, it is not just a childish accident, and assorted TV ads tell us with much regularity that incontinence is a very real condition for a goodly chunk of the population.

Yet, even though we recognize it as the reality it is, we still refuse to accept it. Hence this poor woman’s dismay. It was written all over her pained face. Somehow I think she (and maybe others of ourselves) would rather have been caught having sex in public scrutiny than just simply wetting her pants. I mean, what could she do? I suppose she could have hidden herself away somewhere. Yet, why should she have to? Why would we think that the rest of society should regard a simple mishap as being anything more than the ‘oops’ it is. Yet, we think that, because what she did was humiliating. I was one of those things that would be right up there with ‘worst fears’ on a par with inadvertently farting when being presented to the Queen, or accidentally spitting in the face of somebody we’re hoping to impress with our sophistication and elegance.

Human dignity and the standards we impose around it (and the standards we accept for ourselves) are major matters in the lives of all cultures. We do not break protocol, whatever that protocol might be. And public peeing for your garments is deemed a breach of preconceived protocol.

Eventually, after an hour or so, the woman made a final scrutiny of her garment and I guess the sun had worked its magic and she was able to leave without calling attention to herself. It must have been the longest boat trip of her life and it will probably take her years to live down the mortification – within herself at least.

I offer no answer for her plight, but I cannot help but wonder why we impose such brutal penalties on ourselves for a very simple thing. And the woman’s face told me she was utterly eaten up inside about the matter.

Poor thing.

All I had to give her was sincere sympathy within myself. Of course, our mores also dictate that I could 'not' go over, pat her on the shoulder and say: “Hey, it’s OK. It could happen to any of us.” But, that would have been utterly unacceptable.