Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash

You’re waiting to begin a Half-Marathon into the rolling countryside. As soon as it starts, your nerves make your bladder inflate like a water balloon at the end of a fire hose. The crowd of cheering people sweep you along as you’re wracked with agony. What do you do, Chuckles? Where is your God now?

Your family waves signs and gazes on with hope. Daddy finally unwrapped his pasty hands from the Xbox controller and took the Doctor’s exercise orders seriously. Maybe he won’t be a total failure as a father anymore.

Are you seriously going to piss your pants in front of them? Shame on you!

No problem, you say! I’ll just stop at a Port-a-Potty or duck behind a tree. Riddle solved, Rumplestilskin. Next question!

Do you have the arrogance to think they put portable bathrooms 20 feet into a 13.1-mile road race? Ha! Normal humans don’t release their anxiety into their nether-regions, so you’ve got at least 7 miles ahead of you without any hope of private release.

Go back? This is your last straw, man! You paid fifty bucks to run this stupid race, Deborah is going to leave you if you keep up these shenanigans!

That leaves public urination. You’re going to end up on a watch-list if you pull that crap. Show some dignity, you pervert!

You’ve already hobbled a half a mile behind a smiling group of middle-aged frenemies arguing over the lyrics of Happy by Pharrell. (The line is “Like a room without a roof,” you imbeciles.) If you peed your pants really slowly, would anyone notice?

Yes! Would you notice a moist darkness creeping down a slightly overweight man’s gray sweatpants? The college girls behind you have already been making fun of your dumpy drawers and worn-out basketball shoes for the last five minutes. Why don’t you ask them?

Your only choice is to retreat to your own inner oubliette of suffering and wait for the sharp knife in your pelvis to fade into a dull promise of shame.

Pop quiz, numb-nuts!

You’ve somehow made it two miles to the first water station and you’re starting to feel like man-jerky. However, you know that one more cup of liquid will reawaken the bladder beast and kill you.

Gatorade or water?

Neither! You double the pace and blow past those teenage volunteers screaming, “Not today, Satan!”

If you give in every two miles to your base desires, you’ll end up lying on the pavement in a pool of your own weakness.

I’ve been a little tough on you, sorry. Here’s an easy one.

An hour and a half go by. You’re shivering uncontrollably despite your heat exhaustion. You’re seven miles in (half-way there!) and there have been exactly zero water stations and bathrooms. You decided not to bring anything to drink with you because you thought there would be plenty on the course.

Every nerve in your body is obsessing over thirst or burst. You haven’t seen another racer for over thirty minutes and you feel safe enough to duck off the side of the road and find euphoria.

It’s okay…waddle over there, Captain Smartypants. You wanted to debase yourself so badly, now’s your chance. Too late! You freeze up as you hear a rushing noise racing around the bend.

A car blasts by on the road, their teenage daughter pointing a phone out the window. You almost exposed yourself in a viral TikTok dance challenge, you deviant!

The rush of panic sends the pain raging back, blinding you. You find yourself astride a great sand dune. Shai-Hulud, the Worm Who Is God, rises from the dust and grants you the ability to see all that once was and all that will be. You live in this moment for time innumerable, waking only to guide humanity to the next step of evolution.

As you return from your half-remembered dream, the second water station approaches over a hill at mile 8. The volunteers are starting to pack everything up into a church van, startled to see you bounding towards them like a wounded rhinoceros.

What do you do? I don’t even know why I’m still asking, your judgment sucks!

You shot-glass two Gatorades out of survival instinct. Within seconds, you grasp the folding plastic table and bellow a tortured scream as your urethra erupts like a geyser. A teenage boy catches orange-flavored spittle in the face while trying to help you stay upright.

You stain the ground beneath you with an excretion that smells as bad as it feels. A woman vomits to your left as you maintain eye contact with the spit boy, his face full of fear and understanding and Gatorade.

When the Pastor’s van drops you off in the Emergency room, Deborah and the boys are there waiting. No one can look you in the eye.

Isn’t running fun?