Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Humiliation and the blogosphere

I can't rememer who said it, but there's a great quote out there about the problem with autobiographies being the lack of humiliation. That's probably true of the blogosphere, too: almost nobody blogs their own humiliations (examples, anyone?), but almost everybody blogs the humiliations of others. That's too bad. It seems useful, if not essential, to own up to and figure out a way to laugh at one's humiliations. Heck, David Sedaris makes a living doing it.
Here's a good one: About four years ago, I peed my pants inside an MRI machine. Until that moment, I hadn't fully acknowledged the extent to which MS had compromised my bladder functioning. I remember trying desperately to hold it without squirming, because squirming ruins the picture. During a break between scans, I thought they'd let me out so I could take a leak, but I was wrong. They insisted that it would render the scan pretty much worthless. I told them I was peeing my pants, and they let me out. I remember the guy operating the machine got really mad at me, like I was ruining his lovely picture of my brain. I had to take the train back to my apartment after the scan; I tied a jacket around my waist to hide the pee spot.

I remember thinking, I am 31 years old, and I'm going to start wearing an adult diaper. I only managed to live about 28 years as a potty-trained grown-up. Worse, I only managed about 20 years as a non-bed-wetter.

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