“Vern, I’ve got to go.”

“Ok daddy.  We’re almost to your physical therapist. You can go there.”

“No, no I can’t go there.”  He holds his stomach and it grumbles loudly.

“Why can’t you go to the bathroom there?”

“It’s too noisy. Everyone can hear through that door.  They might as well not have one. The toilet paper is too thin. They might as well not have that either. Please let me go somewhere else.”

“Fine daddy, I pull over at the gas station.”

“Noooo! That place is terrible.  It doesn’t even have paper.  There’s phone numbers all over the wall. The sink is brown.”  His stomach growls again, Rrrrrr!

“It’s a bathroom. You need to go.” 

“I’d rather go right here in my pants than that awful place.”

“Fine, how about the grocery store?”

“I can’t walk that far.  The bathroom is all the way in the back behind the butcher in the storage room around some boxes, in the back corner. I’ll never make it.”

Ggg-rrr-ooo-www-lll! Ggg-rrr-ooo-www-llll!

“Fine daddy, where do you want to go?”

RRR-RRR-GGG-HHH rumbles his stomach again. The hair on his arms stands up. He grabs his stomach and hunches over. “Take me home! I want to go home!”

“We’re twenty minutes away.  By the sounds of it you’re not going to make it.  Here there’s a book store.”

RRRAAARRR!! RRRAAARRR! GRUGH! GRUGH! “Hurry up Vern! I’m going to blow!”

Vern pulled the car up to the book store.  Her father got out of the car hunched over. Holding his stomach he stumbled through the door.  Vern parked the car.  She got in line at the coffee shop.  She ordered her cappuccino and sat to wait. Then she heard it. “Ah!”  She got up.  Worried she made her way to the bathroom.  Her father was walking out of the lady’s room.  The female customer was mouthing off to her father. “You should be ashamed of yourself, old men like you know better than to use the female’s restroom.”

“Lady, I’m a warrior, but that men’s bathroom was a battle I could not face.”  Then he turned to Vern. “Sweetheart, I’m ready to go.”