Children need ways to keep themselves busy.

When I was a children, I occupied myself during the day with second-knuckle-nose-picking. I passed the hours exploring the crevices and passageways of my intricate nascular system with my various appendages. I was never particular about what I brought into the light from the darker recesses of my inner head parts, but I was never deeply amused by what I caught. It was entirely about the sport for me (I have the same attitude toward fishing). It was about being really good at something. I developed new techniques and improved on previous spelunking sessions to eventually arrive at what must have been the height of my abilities. I was to my nose as Michelangelo was to chapel ceilings.

But that was just my day job.

I went to my mother’s house tonight for dinner. Aydika and her mom came along as well.

Many things were discussed during the course of our repas (for all you slovenly and uncultured nincompoops, that’s, like, the French word for “meal”). The conversation, for no better reason than my having directed it as such, came around after a while to center on the subject of Me.

We had previously all been reminiscing at each other. I thought that this was fine and dandy, sugar and spice, pleasant, nice, and all sorts of other happy-face adjectives, but that it lacked any kind of baseness. It was just too pure and simple.

I don’t remember the precise details, probably because I introduced the subject so smoothly you’d think it was a greased pig sliding down an ice-rink that had been tipped on its side, but the meat of the newly directed conversation was the undertaking that I undertook as a child during the nighttime hours.

As I said earlier, children need ways to keep themselves busy, and I was particularly troublesome in the area of busy-keeping on account of my enterprising nature. Furthermore, because children in America have been unfairly barred from working in factories, I had no practical outlet for my stirrings. Trading my energy in the form of labor for a few farthings would have been an acceptable deal in my eyes, but all these leftist laws about so-called “human rights” and other foolishness prevented me. Such is life.

That, I think, explains perfectly well why I used to wet the bed regularly and with such ambition in my early years.

Aydika wasn’t so sure about this.

I was very sure.

It seems to me that bed wetting has the reputation of being something to be frowned upon by people who had the sense as younglings to remove themselves from their beds at the first call from a bladder under pressure to deposit its contents in the nearest socially-acceptable receptacle (typically a toilet, but things might be different in Your Country).

I say these people missed an opportunity.

Children’s needs are complex. I’ve already stated twice that children need ways to keep themselves busy, but that’s ignoring one of the strongest urges of the Small and Undeveloped Human Youth, which is power. Children want to shape their environments. They want to play a part in defining what The Future is going to Be. Their thirst for conquest isn’t quenched by sowing the gardens of their noses during the day – they need more.

Those of us who were sensitive tots, wee ones with a keen understanding that any ocean can make a sandy beach from rocks over eons but that it takes a real Act of God to pulverize stone to particulate matter in a day, knew how best to tug and work the strings of the marionette that is the world.

It’s so simple. There’s a kind of innocent beauty in the solution to the problem of effecting change, and even while sleeping.

Say it with me, everybody: Bed wetting.

You can mock. You can sling the tarball of your scorn upon my pale, milky skin, but before you do, consider the facts.

As a five year old, when I wet the bed, somebody had to come along and change the sheets. I had to have a new blanket. My jammies needed changing as well. I also needed to be consoled and assured that everything would be all right again with the world.

And I got those things. All of them. Whether it was midnight or 4:00 AM, somebody was there to tend to his Royal Highness and his pee-pee bed. Somebody was there to perform this thankless, difficult, and rather disgusting office.

In a way, it was even cleaner than if I hadn’t wet the bed, since I never had to spend more than a few minutes soaking in the bitter smell of my own liquid waste before someone came along to help. It meant that I had new sheets whenever I wanted them, sometimes multiple times per night.

So think. Think again before you take such an arrogant attitude toward people who used to wet their beds. We were just the future preparing to mold itself into the present.

Bed wetting is power.