I’m not going to say you can stay in shape in your advancing years by hovering over a bad toilet, but I’m not going to not say it, either.
That occurred to me on a recent trip to a lovely hike with a portable biffy at the trailhead. The Poop Truck pulled up just as I was going to use the toilet, and I thought I’d have to wait, but the guy in the truck was in no hurry—why would he be?—and waved me in. I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t figure out it might be nice to wait until he was done. Instead, I occupied the facility at the very most advanced stage of its hygiene journey. It’s not great when you can feel the heat off the accumulated effluent. No toilet paper either. Well, I’m an old hand at this.
It involves both lowering and raising pants. Drop the drawers, raise the hems so that they do not touch the (gack) (gack) floor. And then hover.
That’s one of my better things. In fact, the only way in which my body is above average is my quadriceps. I can hover for a darn long time. And that, as it turns out, is what is required when you’re an old lady. (“Advancing years,” my fanny. They’re thundering over a cliff.)
I mean, I know old men have it worse. I hear they are not only getting out of bed five times a night (spare me, I’d rather wear rubber pants) but then they’re having weak flow, or just standing there feeling like something should be happening and they really wish it would but it isn’t. Do I have that right?
But things are different for me too. Fortunately I’m sitting. And draining. First, you pee. You don’t snap it off, but the flow stops anyway. You learn to wait. Sure enough, after a bit it starts up again. And repeat. Eventually your containment system appears to have emptied and you can go about your (other) business, hoping the act of standing up does not provoke further unscheduled draining. It takes time, but I usually have nothing better to do.
But this is new. Damn, pee used to just shoot out of there. If you brought pressure to bear, you could knock out unauthorized critters in a pit toilet before they even had a chance to drown. If you’re in a long line at a concert and people are waiting, you can expedite things, is what I’m saying.
Now, no shooting. Just draining. Kegels don’t help. I realized that the problem was not the sphincters. What I think is happening is that the same relaxed attitude that my skin has acquired—my skin is no longer intimately attached to my body, but puddles up in the general vicinity of its previous haunts—must also apply to my inner tissues. I suspect that the tension and snap that my bladder material used to have was responsible for exuberant peeing. Now, it’s just an old bag, much like its proprietor.
And so, to bring us back to the beginning, when I hover over the dreadful toilet of perdition, I am holding a sitting position in midair for quite a long time. Quite a long time. And I’m up to it. Don’t cross me. I’m an old lady with quads of steel.
Between that, and the extra miles I get walking in and out of rooms trying to remember why I’m there, I’m going to be a contender. Don’t doubt me, or my sisters in dotage, Peanut. Our other superpower is we don’t really care what you think.
I’m in denial about how old I am. Which isn’t really true. I’ve always embraced my age because apparently I’ve looked much younger than I actually was and it gave me inordinate pleasure to see the shock on their faces.
But these days I’m feeling my age and apparently looking it too. Bending over is a chore. As is getting up. I can stand for hours until I can’t. Can’t go horizontal for hours because eventually the pain in my hips gets too annoying. And I can’t seem to sleep past 3 am.
Been dealing with the frequent urination thing recently, but fortunately it’s just a volume and frequency issue, not a denial of service. I’m not sure what it’s all about. Once in the last year it was a uti and settled with an antibiotic.
The latest declaration of age was starting with flashers and a floater in my right eye. Flashers are caused by the vitreous humor shrinking and pulling away from the retina resulting in bad data which the brain interprets as flashes of light. In my case it looks like swirling streaks following a single bright point.
I thought I knew what floaters were. Been seeing these transparent amoeba-like things moving slowly across my field of vision for years.
But the new floater is a blurred gray to brown chop mostly in the right side of my right eye. I can make it snap from side to side, but it never goes away. I can even see it with my eyelids closed if the light is bright enough.
The optometrist tells me the flashers will go away and they have for the most part. But the floater is here to stay. It’s annoying because it’s easily misinterpreted as a flying insect or a smudge on my glasses. Dammit, the right eye is the good one! I’m a practitioner of the visual arts. Kinda hard to do when your vision is effed up!
Could be worse though. Could be multiple floaters or one really big one. Buddy at work has one that squeezes his vision in one eye, so it’s actually distorted.
A friend told me it could be lasered away. Sounds expensive and risky. My brother, who is medical and has money says he learned to live with his and hardly notices it/them now.
Oh yeah, squatting over nasty porta potties/outhouses/public toilets. Been there done that. Also done the bear thing out in the woods. Fun fact, squatting is a more natural and efficient way to eliminate than sitting. What takes forever in the bathroom is over and done with, bought the t-shirt out in the woods.
A friend of mine had been constipated more or less all the time until the first time he went out in the woods and couldn’t find a branch to sit on (over). Some girl told him to just squat, and everything worked great, and from that time on, he squatted with his feet on the toilet.
I’d like to be that agile!
Oh, yes – urination on the installment plan! I think you and I are “of an age,” Murr, so your pattern is the same as mine. Darn aggravating when you’re kinda in a hurry, but not much to do about it but take a bit of “me time,” even if there’s a line outside the door.
My hovering abilities over a grody toilet are pretty good, too, but my knees tend to complain when I squat in the woods as low as I need to (to move garments out of the way, for instance), so it’s nice if I have something to grab hold of in front of me — a small tree, perhaps? — so as not to tip over backwards. Gotta watch out for stickers, though.
Growing older IS an athletic event.
If I have a lot of garage sales to go to on a Saturday, since it’s summer, I wear a sundress and go commando. There aren’t always many public toilets or porta-potties when you need one. And if I have to buy a coffee to use the toilet that just exacerbates the problem. I would rather they just charge you a buck to use it and be done with it. I always have tissues in my purse, and there are lots of copses of trees where I go “saling.” Since I have frequency issues, I try to cut back on liquids if I have a long morning ahead. I also try to memorize where all the public toilets are, and also where they are doing home remodeling so that they have porta-potties in people’s yards. And I am not shy about using them, gross as they are. Oh, yeah, baby! I can hover, too! But some people are amateurs at it based on all the “seat sprinkles.”
Well I don’t feel so bad now. I don’t have to think about that much at all. Only the rare urgent poop event gets me in trouble. And only once every 15 years or so. But they’re memorable.
Joan, I have recently perfected the Asian Squat. I even weed my garden that way.
It took three scenarios going through my head until I think I landed on the one you mean: you pull weeds from your garden while squatting, instead of sitting or kneeling. Is that it?
Scenario 1: you wee in your garden.
Scenario 2: you kill your weeds with bodily outflow, in the moment.
My brain gives me the most interesting stories to ponder!
Third scenario. Any unscheduled effluent is just a nitrogen bonus.
Yes, alas! You have it right. Only have to get up twice per night, so far. Which ain’t so bad: the cat likes the extra opportunities to talk to me about how, since I’m up anyway, there’s this issue of infrequent feeding he’s been meaning to bring up.
You really need to fake being asleep around your cat or you’ll never sleep in again.
Brings me back to a couple of years in the Peace Corps. Those Ecuadorian Native Americans along the Napo river all had intestinal parasites. I still have nightmares of being barefoot and walking into a ‘bathroom’. Of course I wore shoes, but the dream persists. Sitting down was never in the program. I dispensed lots of anthelmintics.
I looked it up too, Mary W. Figured he’d mistyped something but NO, he’s just smarter than I am. Thanks Victor!
Thanks to Victor I have learned a new word! And I have never hovered. Always just took my chances on the nastiest of seats, after a quick wipe with TP. In my experience, hoverers pee on the seat.
Weak hoverers pee on the seat. But you’re right–that’s where the pee splatters come from. Not from me.
If I am leaving the house, I am old enough to develop a game plan. Drink coffee first, you need to void before opening the door to leave. No drive thru beverages. Know you territory. What stores have the best bathrooms, how close to the door is the bathroom, don’t leave the restaurant without using the bathroom. It’s a beverage or water, not both.
I am an old lady who birthed five babies. When I gotta go, I gotta go. I swear this is what makes me such a good gramma with potty training. Take them with me when I go and if we travel, I know where every bathroom is.
And be sure your pockets are packed with tissues!
There’s no excuse for me. No baby birthing. There’s been other stuff in there but the problem I had for a while was fibroids crowding my bladder. Now they’re reduced and no longer a bother, but everything is going to take some time.
Wow! And here I thought that I was the only one who had a game plan for peeing! I don’t know nuthin’ about birthin’ no babies… but as I have aged, I have more trouble holding it in until I get home. And somehow when my bladder senses the presence of the toilet, I very barely make it.
Like, the moment you pull into the driveway? Fine one second, in a state of emergency the next. Too true, too true!
I’ve been buying and using minipads for years. They’re not just for premenopausals anymore!
This is my thing too. I can hold it for miles and miles walking with no apparent effort but when I make the turn into the bathroom and the toilet becomes visible, all hell breaks loose. My only strategy is to rehearse which pants I am wearing (snap? Button? Zipper?) before I get there.
Murr, you’re a fine writer–I’m not crazy about the picture you painted in my head with the hovering, but I sure could relate to all that peeing! Um, I’m not an old man (well, I am 64) but you sure got my own nighttime bathroom trips down pat. Yep, 4-5 times a night. My problem is, I don’t know where all this pee is coming from. Also, it’s impossible for me to do it sitting down; I have to go while standing up. I’m sure that sitting is squishing my enlarged prostate or such. Sure do miss those childhood days on the farm, I’d go outside on a snowy morning and literally write my signature “Douglas Edwin Morris” in the snow!
Nobody on this site would mind if all you could leak out was “DEM.”
It’s true squatting is the best for the bowels, this is why a low toilet is better than the taller ones so many seem to prefer. I have also recently discovered that peeing frequency, in my case at least, is lessened if I reduce the amount of sugar in my coffee and more so if I reduce the number of coffees too. By drinking mostly water, my bladder is able to hold more and for longer.
Those of us with weak legs may not be able to get up again from a low toilet, thus the taller ones.
When we put in two new bathrooms, Dave insisted one of them have a toilet he didn’t have to free-fall into. But he’s six-five.
I keep a kid’s stool (IKEA “forsiktig”, $5) near the toilet and increase the squattage factor with that under my feet. So much cheaper than the products built specifically for that purpose!
Having said that, however, as soon as Thing 2 moves back out and our second bathroom is freed up, I’m replacing the standard toilet in the little room in the master bath. Too low for our aging bodies–I had to install a grab bar years before one would think it necessary, just for the leverage as there is nothing else in that little cubby hole to grab onto, except the door frame!
Getting up twice is a good night. Three times is more likely. Five times happens sometimes.
Seriously. Rubber pants.
I recently read that one of the huge issues facing the now depleted staff (but even before) is all the poop on and around walkways and trails in our public lands. People don’t dig a hole , don’t cover with rocks and stones and vegetation,,,,,, ugh ugh ugh. And of course lotsa dogs are poop hounds- and love to retrieve the’ tasty’ tissues. Please consider a trowel or other measures……
…such as voting out every Republican there is.
The solution for using a higher toilet but still getting the benefit of squatting is the Squatty Potty. There are some really weird YouTube commercials featuring rainbow unicorn poop which I could not bring myself to link. But from my personal experience as someone with bad knees who needs a higher throne, it works.
Advertising with rainbow unicorn poop should be outlawed.
I have a urinal by my bed so I don’t have to walk to the bathroom at night. Might not make it the ten feet otherwise.
You need a ten-foot hose. Uh.
I’m so happy I read this. I have the same draining issue and thought something was wrong with me. Turns out it’s a thing. Whew!
Doesn’t mean you don’t have something wrong with you. Just means you have company.
Well now I have to comment again as to commonality and cause. When I was still being considered for the botox study for urinary incontinence, I was referred to a PT specialist in pelvic floor issues (which applies to both men and women), and before I ended that at the study’s request I learned enough about the process to know that the slow stream is in fact considered less than optimal, and that at least for women, the issue relates to the tightness/looseness of all three of the vaginal muscles, which the therapist determines by way of an internal exam. The therapy itself is addressed to strengthening/relaxing those muscles, and Kegels alone won’t work. What does work supposedly consists of exercises with a therapeutic tool that in all but name is a sex toy. So I guess us older women with no current sex partners could probably benefit from exploring SheBop or something. https://www.intimaterose.com/collections/pelvic-wands
“Pelvic wands”
They’re magical!
Wow, I’m away from the internets for 2 measly days and come back to this bio lesson. Very interesting. Just chat among yourselves now for another few minutes because I’ll need to go and powder my nose.
Wow, the comments today are great. and informative, and empathetic. Leaving me with nothing to add…
Murr – you seem to have heralded the birth of a meme for old folks. This is from The Guardian today – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/08/dont-power-pee-but-do-grab-mirror-13-easy-effective-ways-protect-pelvic-floor