Saturday, September 4, 2010

In the Kingdom of Pee

HG notoriously has a weak bladder. On a good night, she gets up only twice to pee.  If she drinks a whole glass of water before bedtime, she's screwed.  Travel is a whole another matter.  HG has developed an immunity to whatever condition the toilet is.  She will pee anywhere - in a clean toilet, in a dirty toilet, in a very dirty toilet, in a a very very dirty toilet, in a life-forsaken toilet - and even has improvised when no toilet was around.   Her pee stories are legendary and the poor thing is often a brunt of jokes for family members.

The only other compulsion that is as forceful as the need-to-pee is the need-to-not-wake-up.  Sometimes, the two clash (esp. as I mentioned before, if a whole glass of water is involved).  They wrestle with each other for dominance of HG.  And the resulting scenarios are pretty funny to watch.  I came home yesterday to find her lying on  the bed with very sleepy and sad eyes.  Yes, she needed to pee and yes she didn't want to get up.  This was the usual but what happened next was completely unexpected.

I wish I had the ability to hand off the need-to-pee to someone else.

Eh?

As a punishment you know? It'll be my reward for doing good.

And then came the fascinating story of the Kingdom of Pee.   

In the Kingdom of Pee, every man or woman is given a certain quota of a number of pees as a burden to carry around upon birth.  This quota is handed out by a set of gods called the Pee Birth gods.  Every person's conduct does is carefully observed by the Pee Conduct gods (shudder!).  If a person has done something good, not a regular everyday-do-your-job good, but a good of good significance, then the Pee Conduct gods will grant you a wish - you can hand out 10 need-to-pees to someone you don't like.  You can't force the good deed, it has to be completely accidental.  (What she meant by this was not too clear, but I am guessing it's something like you delivering life-saving CPR on your way to work when you're not even licensed to give First Aid. It's got to be that accidental, I suppose.) And you can get an option that no one should hand you their need-to-pee too.  So HG's survival 101 was this  - you should ask for Option 2 as your first reward (No one shall hand their need-to-pee to Thee!) and from then on Option 1 (Thou can hand over 10 need-to-pees to one that Thou detests! Oh for Pee's sake, stop handing them off to your husband!)

The rules of the Kingdom of Pee broke down of course under my persistent What-if-scenarios, but in the end of this, seeing my flabbergasted expression, she goes - Hey you know what I realized? 

Gulp, what?

 I can make up shit as I go along.

You can't tell from the way I walk that...

Well..I got through the quals.  In the end, the big guy's ego had to be stroked - not too much, not too little - just enough for him to feel important and make him feel ...validated.

In the beginning I did study - hard.  Hours and hours of logic everyday.  It even gave a new mode of thinking.  There was one question set handed out and I completed it.  There were no more question sets from then on.  I just solved questions from the text book and slipped them under his door.

Look, am working hard. You've made an effect.

After a time it became apparent that there was going to be no re-examination.  No re-quals and no re-testing.  I doubt he even looked through my answer sheets.  In the end, he simply signed the document and we went off to vacation to Boston.  I suppose I shouldnt complain about how this turned out.  It's just that the pointlessness is more overwhelming than the importance.

I'll take the logic, thanks.  I'll even take the lesson on whom to watch out for.  I feel nothing.

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After living with HG here for almost two months, I have deduced that there is a certain pattern to when she asks me to do something about the house. Here are the three modes
1) If you are standing in the vicinity of something that needs to be done - honey, do this.
2) If you are standing in the general vicinity and you are a presence that is sometimes a tad unnecessary - honey while you're there, can you do this?
3) If you are nowhere in the vicinity and  there is something that needs to be done - honey on your way here can you please do this?

The best part is that all this is asked irrespective of what you are doing.  You could be doing  nothing (close the windows), peeling potatoes (can you increase the AC?)  or vaccuming (she actually made me stop vaccuming to ask me throw something in the garbage).  I was once working, and got up to pee when I was asked to switch off the fan.  The fan was nowhere close to me or my path from the couch to the loo, but there it was - I was asked to to make a detour to where she was and to switch off the fan.

Unbelievable.
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