Peeing Downtown

A few months ago on a Friday evening after work I headed over to The Loon Cafe in downtown Minneapolis to meet up with my buddies Mitch Manson, Ted Booker and Mike Spicoli.  We were having pre-show drinks before the ‘Golden Smog’ concert, which was down the block at The Fine Line Music Cafe.  So we were there for an hour or two and eventually it’s time to head over to the Fine Line for the show.  I figure I'd better pee at the Loon before we go, as it will be a lot easier going there than at the concert.  I head down the stairs to the bathrooms, but about halfway down I hear gales and gales of laughter coming up from the Men’s bathroom.

I get to the bottom of the stairs with the Men’s room on the right, and there are like 4 or 5 guys down there just laughing their asses off.  They are practically crying as they’re pointing into the bathroom and saying stuff like:  “That’s my guy!”  “Oh my god!”  “No way!”  I’m wondering if I should even go in there, but I am curious, plus I had to pee.  It’s a small bathroom, but I push my way through the guys and past the only stall to the two urinals.  The far urinal is taken so I stop at the first one, but as I am whipping it out I suddenly noticed that the guy next to me is standing there peeing with his pants down to his ankles!  Now I see why everybody is laughing!  He’s just standing there with his bare legs and ass hanging out and peeing like nothing is the matter.  What?!  The dudes behind us are still laughing hard and I assume he is with them and he’s trying to be funny, so I start laughing too. 

But then he says to me:  “What?  What’s so funny?” like he has no idea why everyone is laughing.  Huh?  Seriously?  Then I think, am I being punked?  Are there hidden cameras?  This has to be a gag.  Nobody in the world pees that way with their pants around their ankles, especially in public unless they’re under 4 years of age.  I am speechless and just shrug my shoulders,  trying not to look at him.  Then he says:  “I don’t know what’s so funny…this way I don’t dribble on myself.”  And then I think, oh crap, he must be mentally handicapped or just slow or something.  Then I realize that all of the other dudes have left because the laughter has stopped and it’s just me and him now.  Then while I’m still going and he’s washing his hands he says:  “Does it always snow here in April?  Is that not uncommon?” and he sounded completely normal as we talked about the goofy weather and the late snow we’d been having that spring.

So now I am completely stumped.  Was he with the other dudes and just being funny?  I think not since they never referred to him by name, and they all left.  Was I being punked?  I think not because nobody ever jumped out and pointed out the hidden cameras to me.  Was he mentally handicapped?  I think not because he sounded completely normal when he talked.  Was he a foreigner from a weird country where all the dudes pee with their pants around their ankles?  I think not because he did not have any accent and I am not aware of any such countries.  Was he like Tom Hanks in the movie ‘Big’ where a small boy gets trapped in a man’s body?  I think not because that is just a movie and cannot happen in real life.  

By process of elimination, all that leaves me with is that he was just an ever-so-slightly weird dude who has always peed that way since he was a kid and never changed when he grew up.  But that doesn’t make sense either because I cannot believe that somewhere along the line somebody didn’t pulled him aside and said:  “Dude, guys aged 4 and older do not do that on this planet.  There’s a better way.  Keep your pants up.”  He simply MUST have had a friend along the way to straighten him out right?  I don’t know…I really wish I had said something along those lines to him, because now I fear I will never know the mystery of the man-boy ankle-pants pee-er.  If anybody knows him, or knows somebody like him, please comment below and help clear up the mystery.