Oh thank goodness for your John

Remember when we bought my mom TravelJohns for Christmas? (TravelJohns are these disposable portable urinals consisting of a molded hard plastic component to "direct the stream" and a bag with a liquid solidifying agent to contain the urine.) My mom is pretty notorious for not really using presents that my sister and I buy her, so I didn't think much of it. In fact, after my husband and I bought them, we agreed that it was more a gift for us kids to laugh about than something my mom would actually use.

The next March, the whole family went to Mammoth for a weekend to ski. My husband, then boyfriend, came along as well. My mom and I were standing around at the bottom of the ski hill near Canyon Lodge, one of the largest lodges at the resort. We were near the large map of the ski area, where lots of people were milling around, waiting for their friends and family to finish their runs.

I should probably mention here that my mom wears a teal and purple one-piece suit when she goes skiing.

My sister and my mom at Park City Mountain Resort.

She likes to brag that she got it for very cheap at Bargain Box, a local thrift shop which has been the location of many many bad clothing decisions on the part of my mother. The problem with my mom wearing a one-piece suit, however, is that she often really needs to pee. And one-piece suits are not easy to get off. Add to this the fact that my mom uses an old CamelBak when she skies, and because it does not have a sternum strap, she uses a complicated system of elastic hair ties and the extra webbing from the shoulder straps to secure the CamelBak across her chest. So in order to take off her snowsuit to pee, she has to undo this complicated knotted strapping system to remove her CamelBak and then get the top of her snowsuit off. To my knowledge, this has led to at least one accident in the past.

So there we were, standing at the base of Canyon Lodge, near the big map, with tons of people skiing by, meeting up with their friends and family, and getting into lift lines. I was talking to my mom about something, and then turned for a few seconds to look up the hill for my sister. When I turned around, my mom was skating toward the nearest trash can with a full TravelJohn in her hand.

HOW HAD SHE PEED RIGHT THERE WITHOUT ANYBODY NOTICING?!?!?! With all her clothes on??? I had been standing right next to her the entire time!

My mom made her way back to me and nonchalantly said, "Oh thank goodness for your John."