Have you ever lain in bed for long minutes deciding to pee?

I can’t be alone – I suspect the behavior’s common, though seldom discussed. When I was growing up, polite people didn’t pee or poop or do the naughty. “Do the naughty” in the foregoing sentence replaces a verb that did not exist. Practicality demanded words for pee and poop (“wee” and “number two,” as I recall), but for the sublime act of procreation? Babies just arrived – not via stork, since we had none – but, well, straighten your tie, Carll, have you brushed your teeth? When, I wonder, did the idea of sex wriggle into my safeguarded consciousness? As whispered playground gossip? Or glimpsing an older sister naked (with her surprising absence)?

Modesty may be the most inconvenient human innovation. Eve blushed after eating the serpent’s apple. Knowledge of good and evil somehow made our ancestors ashamed of themselves. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, but humans? Shush now, mind your manners.

But we were talking the wee hours, if you’ll forgive me, lying in bed debating whether to bestir ourselves to do what we know we must and eventually will. Why dally? Why not just up-and-at-‘em-Adam lickety-split and resume our rest? Is this disquiet pleasurable? Does this contest between necessity and free will somehow enthrall? What on earth, Carll, are you waiting for?

True, I don’t want to get up now, fumble for slippers and light switch, attempting not to wake the sleeping dog (who’s listening intently, but so far keeping mum). The cozy warmth beneath sheets is preferable to the brisk ambient air (brisk in all seasons, gratis a/c). I have my reasons for dawdling – but, face it, they’re nonsense. What makes sense is to do and have done. Yet I linger – musing about this stupid contretemps as if it were worth musing about. Shake a leg, Carll, giddyup!

Humans, alone of earth’s creatures, seek to know we exist. Other species, best we know, don’t wonder who they are, how they differ, how to define and contrast their “selves.” They think we (with one e) not I, “must” not “ought”. Two roads never diverge for them in a yellow wood: they take the road that makes most sense, period. They may err, but they don’t repent.

Choice proves we exist as individuals. Eve had a choice: she chose to disobey: and when God found out, she and her hubby writhed with shame. Our choices, differentiating us from the herd, identify us as individuals. And nowhere is choice more apparent than between our navels and knees. A frequent first rebellion for tots is when to poop. Peeing is controversial from the get-go. And genitals are troublemakers from their arousal.

Those long minutes in bed debating whether to pee reenact the fundamental drama that defines us as humans: do I do as I must or as I choose? Obey or defy? Is God in charge or I? Our rebellion will fail, we’ll vanish like any other creature, but the longer we can resist necessity, the more heroic our self.

Eventually we wake to the idiocy of our opposition. C’mon, Carll, just go and get it over with. Having blissfully surrendered, I shuffle back to bed. (“No, Henry, it’s not morning yet. Shhh.”) Lying in the dark I think how complicated humans are comparatively. We think ourselves into follies and funks. All the other creatures are still partying in Eden and here I am wrangling about the inevitable. What an ass! Then I wonder, for sleep is playing coy, what to write about tomorrow. And here we are.