My need for a Whiz Freedom

I know it is a bit early, but I know what I want for Christmas, do you?  Well before I tell you what it is, let me ask you this.  Have you ever wondered if women pee more than men?  Okay, okay, that resounding yes, from my husband apparently answers my question, I do at least!

In a moment of holiday boredom, I picked up a magazine that had been left behind in our house and found a funny article on female urinary devices.  No, not a giant cork as my ever supportive husband has suggested I use, but funnel shaped contraptions.  What a fantastic idea!



Apparently not all of these devices are born equal, so some are a better fit than others, if you know what I mean.  All I know is I want one.  Top of their list is one called Whiz Freedom.  When I went on their site to check it out, I found you can buy it alone (in purple or white) or as a gift set.  I mean how neat is that?  What to get granny (or me) for Christmas.  I want the Ultimate Pack, which contains the Whiz Freedom,  an extension tube, some hand sanitizer and a urine collection (or relief as they call it) bag.  All of this comes packaged in a neat pink purse.  Come on, what isn't there to like with this gift?  Oh yes, and the collection bag has a pretty floral design on it, so you can look really feminine as you whip your Whiz Freedom out the fly of your jeans and relieve yourself in public.  PLEASE, someone buy this for me.  Oh and whilst you are at it, buy one for my girlfriends too (er, that would be one each of course).

Okay you are probably saying to yourself, she wants one for her girlfriends too?  Isn't that a bit of a mean thing to say?  Ha!  How many times do you (women) pee before leaving the house?  In fact do you ever leave the house without urinating?  When out, do you cast looks around for the nearest public convenience?  Do you 'go' even when you don't need to?  Have you ever envied men their ability to drink pint after pint of beer and not use the toilet, whereas you drink a thimble-full of wine and then nip to the loo to make room for more?  If the answer is yes, then you too need this handy device.

The place I could have used this the most was when I lived in Cote d'Ivoire.  In the city, we could rely on either getting home relatively quickly, using the one in the restaurant (if it was a nice sort of place) or drop in at a friends place with a wild eyed look that would have your hostess mutely pointing to the nearest loo.  Outside of the city, you took your chances.  After using several toilets that defied description, the last straw was the toilet belonging to a restaurant, up near the boarder with Burkina Faso.  As always, where we ate was judged not only by what sort of food we were likely to get, but by the availability of a 'usable' toilet.  We choose a large establishment which looked to fit the bill.  On asking for the toilet after my meal, the waitress grabbed a key and walked.  She walked me out the restaurant, along the road, down a side street and into a sort of alleyway lined with padlocked sheds.  My gulp probably could have been heard clear to Kenya.  She unlocked the padlock, handed me the key and left me to it.  On entering the ground moved somewhat.  Er no it didn't move, that was actually the flies taking off.  The interior was just a large concrete slab, angled slightly towards a drainage ditch and slick, slick, slick as can be.  I had no choice, I HAD to go.  Alan who had drunk the same amount if not more than me, was sitting comfortably in the restaurant, but I NEEDED TO PEE (and let me tell you, I was thanking God at that point that peeing was ALL I needed to do).  Having dropped my shorts and knickers and holding them away from my body, I attempted to squat and pee, whilst keeping my sandalled feet from slipping and using my other hand to swat at my bum in an effort to keep the flies off it.

Of course I did slip and slide and so peed not just the on the ground but on my feet, legs and shorts also.  I don't even want to think about what was splashing back onto my feet.  That was it.  I was done.  I decided at that moment that modesty be dammed, I was never going to use one of those places again.  And I didn't.  If the loo wasn't up to scratch, I walked away and went al-fresco.

Of course peeing in the open for a woman isn't like it is for a man.  Alan could just go where he wanted, where as I needed a more secluded area.  Initially I ran into problems peeing in the bush because I was afraid of what type of insects or snakes might be around.  Eventually we just opened the front and back doors of the car and I peed between them (on the ground that is!), whilst shouting at Alan that he mustn't look (why would he even want to?!).  This wasn't without difficulty.  One time, we had driven into a small road, with fields of some very tall crop all around us, and not a sound for miles.  I jumped out, opened the doors, pulled down my shorts and knickers and was just about to find some blessed relief, when a man popped his head up out of the crop, machete in hand and enquired "Oui?".  Those shorts came up, I jumped into the car and shouted "drive" at Alan.  See, had I have had my very own purple Whiz Freedom, I could have stood companionably next to Alan, by the side of the road, and peed contentedly.

Another really good reason why a Whiz Freedom would have come in useful during my African stay, was that I had splashed my walking shoes so many times with roadside urinating, they had actually discoloured!

I have a theory that women go through a sort of mass hysteria peeing.  Take my girlfriends who joined me in France.  We hadn't even left the airport before the first, 'where is the nearest loo?" echoed around the car.  This set the course for their stay.  On one delightful morning having all peed to our hearts content before leaving the house, I announced that we should all pee again before leaving as I didn't know where the toilets were located at our destination.  No, we were not going to Outer Mongolia, but into a town.  I myself went, but they said they were fine as they hadn't long been.  I locked the house and as I walked to the car, one of them said, "Er, maybe I should just go".  Then the other said, "well if you are going I might as well go too" and I, after upbraiding them for letting me lock the door before saying anything, said, "well, maybe I should just try to squeeze out a bit more".  Are we nuts?  No, just women with bladders on our minds.

See, if we each had had one of those Whiz Freedoms, we could have just peed into a bottle in the car just like the blokes, or put on the Whizz extension hose and just peed out the car window.  Heaven.

Let's face it, we do tend to pee in packs.  If one goes, we all go. Yes toilets do act as our private confessionals with our girlfriends (well private but for the other women having similar conversations with their girlfriends) but the thing is, we do actually pee when we go in there, not just chat.

Of course we have to hold our hands up and say that a certain amount of our 'needing' to pee, is in fact psychological.  How many of us go to the loo, but do not pass enough urine to wet a litmus test paper?

The article about the urinary devices quotes research that says women urinate more frequently than men because we have trained our bladders to want to go more, not because our bladders are smaller than men's (though I know at least one man who claims to go once or at most twice a day - his bladder must be the size of one of those space hoppers, so I hope to God that mine IS smaller than his!).

Basically we go to the toilet when we can as we do not want to get caught short in public.  Think about it ladies, if we had Whiz Freedoms, we wouldn't have to worry about where we pee, so the pressure would be off (quite literally) our bladders.

So, if you are wondering what to get me for Christmas (or my birthday, or for Easter or because you love me), think what a wonderful present a Whiz Freedom would make.

Right, I have to finish here as I need a pee!