the miseducation of joffin-mari 1

when i was about 4, i asked my dad why boys pee standing and why girls pee sitting. i suppose he was preoccupied with something and just brushed off my silly little why question. he turned to me, and told me that it's just the way it is.

but of course little ol' me wouldn't take a brush off answer just like that. so for a few years, i would occasionally pee standing (mostly at home, and i think once in my grade school bathroom) just to shed a bit of light to my question.

this topic came up last night and so i asked d why this is so, with the boys standing. he casually said that guys can pee sitting, too. this was kinda like how the conversation went :

me : no you can't
d : yes you can
me : you can?! but it would be too messy!! (horrified)
d : why would it be messy?
me : uhm, because if you don't hold your thing down it'll squirt over?
silence
d : uhm why do you have to hold it?
me : well, isn't it supposed to be hard when you pee?
silence
laughter
the sound of mortification on my side

d : how long have you lived with this guy?
me : uhm, six years.
d : and you never saw this peeing?
me : never really observed.
muffled sounds of mortification again


okay. so sue me. I REALLY DID NOT KNOW. okay? honest! i mean sure i've seen the guy pee, but i assume it's always you know hard, well maybe because it's the morning pee and the morning wood combined, so i just assume it's always like that, and that's why guys can't pee sitting.

okay, point number 2 : my brother JP has to be guided in the bathroom to pee, and as his older sibling it wasn't a big deal to me. yes, it wasn't always hard, but i just assumed that because there is something developmentally wrong with my brother, that he was an exception.

there. fine. i have been naive on this thing okay?

i told someone back then that i was too smart for common sense.


i wished my dad just answered my question when i was four and saved me the humiliation of not knowing a simple truth.


and that's all i have to say about that.