When Ya Gotta Go Ya Gotta Go

I was traveling from Virginia to Illinois with my daughter-in-law, two of her children, and one of her nephews.

Several hours into the trip, Michelle asked me if I would mind driving. After a while she announced, "Oh, by the way, when Wesley (her nephew) has to go, he has to go NOW!"

She went on to say that when he has to go, he will frantically scream her name from the back of the SUV, and we will have less than a minute to locate a place for him.

A few minutes later, Wesley called his aunt's name with the frantic urgency of a child who had just consumed an entire gallon of milk that was gushing into a gnat-sized bladder.

We pulled off and tried to locate the Subway that the posted sign promised would be off that exit. After driving a mile and not finding it, I doubled back to the gas station we had passed. Michelle jumped out of the SUV to run Wesley into the gas station.

But Wesley had taken off his shoes and couldn't find them. Michelle told him he had to find them, because she wasn't taking him into a dirty bathroom without his shoes on.

While Michelle was checking the bathroom door to make sure she didn't have to get a key, Wesley was searching (in vain) for shoes that may have been buried beneath the pillows he was jumping up and down on while holding himself.

By the time she came back to the car (30 seconds later), Wesley had peed all over himself and the pillows. Michelle looked at his puppy dog face and said, "I KNOW you didn't just pee all over yourself and the pillows!"

But he did. "I told you I had to go."

Michelle took off his clothes while a couple of us took bathroom breaks. Michelle then took her place behind the driver's seat and we drove to Subway, which was probably a mile further from where we originally turned around. Michelle bought sandwiches, drinks, and cookies for all of us so we wouldn't have to go inside to eat.

A couple of hours later, Wesley urgently called his aunt's name again. Not knowing how far we were from the next exit, we pulled over and allowed Wesley to relieve himself out the back door. "Don't pee on the car!" Michelle warned.

When I turned around to make sure he was finished so I could jump out of the car and close the back door, I noticed he was completely naked. I was grateful that traffic was speeding past us and that nobody had seen little naked boy peeing out of the SUV, but every time I thought about him sitting back there naked, I laughed.

All his clothes were packed and, for some reason, he had taken off the t-shirt Michelle had given him to cover himself.

Later, when it was dark, and we had driven through four states with Wesley naked, Michelle noticed she was speeding. "I'd better slow down," she realized.

Yeah I thought out loud knowing that Wesley was sound asleep in the back, "Imagine some cop holding a flashlight and looking inside the car. We'd have a hard time explaining the sleeping naked boy in the back seat.'"