The Pee Machine

 I was a hard core bed-wetter up until at least nine years old. By hard core, I mean I drenched my pajamas along with bed every single night! As a parent, I can now fully appreciate how hard it must have been on my mom  to have to wash my urine filled clothes and bedding every morning. I never did hear one word of complaint in all those years.

It was really embarrassing in many respects and I can clearly remember having to say no to any sleep over requests from my friends, lest they find out about my little secret.
So one day, without telling me why, my mom told me that it was super important that I come home right from school that day. When I got home , there was a stranger in our living room who my mom introduced as a representative of a company that rented out bed wetting alarm machines. What a sales job this guy had.
From that day forward in my house, we called this cool little device, the pee machine.

Here's the way it worked. A aluminum like pad was placed under your sheets. The pad was connected by wires to the little radio like device that was placed by your bed and the unit was plugged in to an outlet. When you let loose, the urine completed the electrical circuit and set off a piercing alarm. The sales guy actually demonstrated it by having a glass with some salt dissolved in it, which he pored on one the pads he had hooked up to the pee machine. Sure enough, when he spilled just a little of the salt water on it, the little unit let out a very shrill tone. I sat there listening to it squeal until the sales guy told me to shut off the pee machine , which I did.
Thankfully, my parents were able to buy the pee machine elsewhere, which was a lot less expensive than renting it.
Over the next several weeks, everyone in the family knew when I was wetting my bed. Sometimes, the piercing alarm would still be shrieking when my mom came in to assist, as I was still sound asleep.
My mom kept a "wetting the bed "report card by my bed, with room for comments and stars if I stayed dry. I remember one of the comments being a simple one word " flood", with others noting how I got up  quickly and actually emptied most of my bladder in the toilet instead of in my bed! Slowly, with some "accidents" in between, the dry nights became more and more frequent, as my body and brain started to understand that when I had to go, it meant that I had to wake up and then go. I'll bet it was an 8-12 week process, but in the end, I was cured!
So lift a glass and join me in saluting  the glorious pee machine!