My Varmint’s softball team, The Poolesville Lightning, won their game this weekend.  It was a game played against a team they had lost to the weekend before, so it was an especially sweet victory.

During breakfast this morning, I was reminiscing with Critter, Varmint, and My Captain about how funny it was that I had yelled out that she would get her favorite Chinese dinner from The Oriental Gourmet Restaurant in Poolesville, as motivation to win while she was pitching.  And as I did so, she struck out 3 in 5 batters (not bad for the second game of a 10-year-old girl).  I was bragging at breakfast that it was my unusual coaching/motivating/bribing technique that helped win the game.

And then My Captain, who had heard enough bull for one meal, allowed that we lost the last game because I kept feeding the team cookies….during the game.  He actually suggested that!  He said I distracted the girls by promising them, and then feeding them, cookies.

Look, these were homemade Oatmeal Whoopie Pies.  It’s like eating a piece of America, right there.  You’ve got your baseball and hot dogs, and you’ve got your softball and cookies.  The way I see it, feeding them cookies during the game is not a distraction, it’s American Pride.  It’s patriotism.

Then he pointed out that I did not give the girls cookies during the game they’d just won.

I said, “Shut up and eat your breakfast.”

We’re loving like that.

My Varmint and Critter asked me incredulously if the stories I write on Mamaboe are true.

A couple of things occur to me:

1) Am I so full of beans that my kids question my veracity, even when publishing my words across the world?

2) Are my life stories so ‘out there’ that it is inconceivable they actually happened?  Am I that much of a freak?

3) Should I admit it to my children, thereby signing them up for what could be perhaps years of adult psychological counseling?

The answer is, YES.  The stories are true.  Yes, I pee in my wetsuit, (along with the rest of you).  Yes, the size WAS marked FXXL.  Yes, I tend to fart or spill food on my chest in public regularly, not because I want to, but because I’m a horrific multi-tasker who eats a healthy amount of fiber on any given day.

I prefer such a wacky, embarrassing, weird life to something more mundane or plain.  What is the use of a life ill-spent?  It becomes nothing more than a use of world resources, and I’d like to think my time here is worth more than that.

And if I teach my kids one thing, besides ‘no, you cannot wear your underwear more than one day in a row’, it is this:  Jump in with both feet.

Pee in your wetsuit.  Fart if you need to. Do not make excuses, just be YOU.

Oh yeah, and if you mean ‘it is’, then it is ‘it-apostrophe-s’. I can never remember that one.

My kid’s attend a sweet little country school called Monocacy Elementary, here in the Agricultural Reserve of Montgomery County, Maryland.  I love this school.  It’s small, rural, and innocent.  It’s well-supported.  It’s full of tradition.   It’s campy.

I love campy.

This week, the school is having its Spring Book Fair to earn money for the school.  My kids get SO excited.  We plan out a budget beforehand, they figure out what they wish to have, and we play the “I can’t afford it game” even though we all know I’m going to buy every book I can afford on the list.   I’m all about words and reading and imagination and entertainment that doesn’t leave one slack-jawed while holding a Wii remote.

So why do I play the “I can’t afford it” game?

It’s a Scottish thing.

What is so dagnab frustrating is that every stinkin time I attend the school’s book fairs, I end up buying another cookbook.  Every. Stinkin. Time.

I have enough cookbooks.  I do not need any more cookbooks.

What I need is books on exercise and books on how to effectively manage my time.

And books on how to get grease spots out of blouses.

But I’ll go this week, and I’ll probably by another cookbook.

And the kids will make their list that I will claim to be too poor to fulfill, but will fulfill anyways.  It’s what we do.

Tradition.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Reminiscing about my youth, and some of the crazy stuff I did, some of my fondest memories come from the years I kayaked white water.  It took a long time for me to learn all the ins and outs of it, and by that I mean how to get in and out of the dagnab contraption…

We used to paddle in the springtime to catch the snowmelt, and the rushing rivers and creeks during that time.  We’d travel from Ohio up to the Slippery Rock River in Pennsylvania and do the “Miracle Mile” which was a fairly technical run, though not a large quantity of water.  It was a good place for a beginner, but still fun for the more seasoned.

And I learned more than paddling skills on it.  It was on the Slippery Rock that I learned how to pick out riverside pee spots.

The hard way.

As I said, it was early springtime, and the air and water were COLD.  We were all bundled up as best we could be to ward off hypothermia.  That meant layers, because we were all too poor to afford Dry Suits.  So picture Mama Boe in the following layers:

Bathing suit.  (a one piece because I’m shy like that…oh, and fat.)

Polypropylene shirt

Wetsuit

Fleece sweater

Paddle Jacket

Life Jacket (PFD)

Helmet

Imagine all of these things wet, which makes them cling to your body as if they were hermetically sealed.

Now, imagine having to disrobe to pee.

(Remember, the air is darn tootin’ cold!)

Ever shivered your way out of a wetsuit?  It’s painful.  Trust me.

So everyone in my group was nice enough to find an Eddy (calmer water to pause from paddling in the moving water) and wait for me to do my business.  I popped open the sprayskirt of  my trusty Response (a good beginner boat at the time.  By today’s standards, it would be considered the ol’ stationwagon you grew up with) lifted my prodigious butt out of it, and slid up the rhododendron covered embankment adjacent to the river.

I did a little bit of scouting….not a lot because I knew my friends were patiently waiting for me, and I was cold as all get out… found what looked to be a fairly open enough spot that I could reasonably squat without getting a rhododendron stuck in a place I would rather it NOT be… and began the tedious task of disrobing.  Off came everything:  The helmet, the Life Jacket, the fleece, the wet suit I pulled off of one foot and left dangling on one ankle (I didn’t want to pee ON it) and then my bathing suit.

Why not just pull the crotch to the side?  I have no idea.  I just didn’t. Probably because I was suffering from acute hypothermia and wasn’t mentating well.  Today, I would just pull it to the side.  No, scratch that, today I would just pee in my wetsuit.

ANYWAYS, I was effectively butt-naked.  In the cold frosty early Pennsylvania springtime.  Imagine me squatting, naked, steam coming off of my rather impressively sized body, my breath coming out in cloudy puffs, and trying to relax enough to pee.

It took a while.

But eventually I could and did and as I started to release my pee, I heard the crack of a stick.  And then another and another.  I looked around, and to my horror, saw a family of five…mom, dad, and three young kids, walking towards me.

Apparently my pee spot was actually a hiking path.

There I was…..

Naked.

Shivering.

Peeing.

(And you wondered why I am the way I am….it’s all coming together now, isn’t it?)

I did the first thing I thought of:  I put my hand up and said, “Hey. How’s it goin?”

They turned abruptly and walked briskly away.

I have that effect on a lot of people.

Me, circa something like 1875.  No, seriously.

About a Kagillion years ago, I paddled.  And by paddled I mean I kayaked white water.  (Get your minds out of the gutter already!)  I used to drive from Columbus, Ohio to anything white and frothy that I wasn’t too skeeered of in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

***Wasn’t Too Skeered Of*** being the important part of that sentence.

During these crazy years, I knew a mountain of a man named Keith.  Keith was / is a ball of energy and sarcasm and intelligence and foolhardiness all wrapped up in a silly grin.

He’s a ton of fun to hang out with.

During the first season, as I was learning to paddle, I was introduced to several new concepts.  First off:  Peeing in the woods.   But that is for another story altogether.   Second:  Wet Suits, and how to live in them.

My first couple of weekends on the water, I actually rented my wet suits, because I didn’t know if I would enjoy the sport enough to plunk down the money to buy my own.   I’ll never forget my mortification when I was being sized and the shop renting the wetsuit put me in an FXXL.

To this day, I don’t actually know what FXXL stands for, but you can imagine what my paddling buddies suggested.

I’m telling ya, with friends like these….

Back to Keith.  We were paddling down the river, and I had to PEE.  I couldn’t hold it any longer, and the thought of getting out and peeling all of my wet, clingy layers off to pee in the woods and then layer them back on was too daunting.  I asked Keith how on earth he dealt with it.  I’ll never forget his response:

“Pam, there are two kinds of people in this world:  Those that pee in their wetsuits, and those that lie about peeing in their wetsuits.”

Now, it’s funny, yes.  But imagine you are wearing a RENTED USED wetsuit when you hear it.

EEEEWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!

Needless to say, I own my own wetsuit now.

(Size FXXL)