I couldn’t help but notice that my entire comment section a while back devolved into a forum for men complaining about having to pee too often, not being able to pee, taking pee drugs that sent their ejaculate sideways—really, lots of things related to their penises that were not as much fun as the marketing for the original equipment had promised. That is their right as penile-Americans; I’d complain too if it felt like I was “peeing through a cinderblock.”

But my original post was about the Bible. I’m not sure what I could have written about that would have gotten a different result. Apparently, peeing occupies much of our attention, especially as we, uh, mature. It’s a Going Concern, if you will.

We’re all vested. The entire point of peeing and pooping is to get rid of stuff you’ve taken in but aren’t going to use. You’re downsizing. There are hoarders among us, but it doesn’t work out well for them. Ask Elvis Presley.

But since the product is stuff our body wants to get rid of, and we are not dogs, we’ve evolved to find it objectionable, and want it far away from us. So instead of letting everything dribble onto us all day long, which works great for vultures, we store it in a handy bag until we can find a likely place and time to dump it. An internal bag, ideally, but if that doesn’t work out we will totally get a surgeon to hang one outside the body.

I had a little problem in my fifties wherein nothing was wrong with my bladder per se, except that fibroids were lounging against it like fat men on a cheap air mattress. Since those went away (I’m told they’re still there, but have lost weight) I’ve been pretty sound. The weird thing though is I can be out for a good long walk—miles and miles—without any sense that I needed to pee, or at least needed to pee right then, and then I come home and meander toward the bathroom and suddenly my Toilet Proximity Alarm goes off and it’s all Whoop! Whoop! Batten down the hatches! and I’d better have all the buttons and zippers figured out before I get in there or there’ll be hell to spray.

I don’t understand it. The entire previous hour there had been no urgency at all.

So the last time that happened—and as I sat there pondering my close call—I got to wondering. Do sea creatures have to pee or does water just go in and out of them without making a big production out of it?

What? What do you think about when you’re peeing? Anyway I decided to find out. Now, your average person who wanted to know about urination among the pelagic set and was on the toilet at the time would probably whip out her phone (which is now somewhere around her ankles), but I do not take my phone into the bathroom, thank you very much. Not because I am a paragon of hygiene, which I am not. I just don’t take it anywhere. Most of the time I don’t even know where it is.

But, in a minor miracle, I actually remembered to look my question up on my laptop after I got done in the bathroom. Forgot to replenish the toilet paper roll, though. And I can’t find my phone.

To be continued.

[Silvia Conte, are you reading this? I can’t answer your email because your address “doesn’t exist.”]