My kingdom for a urinal

This time of year always reminds a former treeplanter of the strange environment that he was once a part of. The treeplanting world is full of entertaining jargon and archetypal stories and discussions. One principle that is universally understood is the planter’s bladder. When you’re working as a treeplanter, your office is a toilet. Now that isn’t to say that there are proximity sensors everywhere waiting to flush or start a drip of water (although some rainy days may feel that way) or even a quiet guy in a suit providing you with alcohol soaked combs. Rather, the entire field of work is available for excretion or elimination of any sort. It is actually very handy, and thus the concept of the treeplanter’s bladder is born. If at any time during your work day as a treeplanter you feel like expressing yourself, you are welcome to, no questions asked, no one to wait for, not even any acute smells to contend with. The end result of obeying this most basic bodily request is that by the end of the summer you have no faculty for holding it in with a mind to waiting until a more appropriate venue becomes available, because of course you have just spent 60 days with no sense of appropriateness in terms of urination. Bowel movements naturally tend to bias the results because people tend to be a tad more choosy in their spots (some opt for various leaning postures, some utilize the dual horizontal log technique, others the single log, etc), but the fundamental principle is the same. I have one friend who shall remain nameless because he is now a successful barrister whose practice would doubtless suffer if this story were accurately attributed. He had just finished a season of treeplanting, with all of the urinary options that entails, and had come to the city. He was getting cash out of an ATM, and wouldn’t you know it, he had to pee. He tried and tried, but couldn’t hold it in long enough to wait for his receipt to be printed and had to disappear into the nearby alley and take care of business. This is the basic risk of planter’s bladder. Not being able to go anywhere for fear of a bladder emergency that cannot be controlled.
Fast forward some years later and I am developing Sydney bladder. It is quite the opposite of planter’s bladder in that since there are no public toilets anywhere; I am stuck holding it until I get home. My first month in Sydney I could find no public toilet and was therefore limited in my range of travel. I thought there must be something out there, but for the life of me I couldn’t find it. Eventually I happened upon a public toilet. I was walking the route I took every day when I noticed a little kiosk had the word toilet written on it. I was very surprised because I had walked by it many times and had never realized that it was a toilet. It looks like a newsstand. I guess in order to keep a constant architectural theme, they have hidden the toilets in newsstand kiosks. Anyway, I filed that information for later, because it was inevitable that I would need it. Sure enough, a few days later, I was walking home from work and I had to pee. I thought, no problem, I will simply access this public toilet. Well, much to my chagrin and the increasing pressure on my abdomen, the toilet was out of order and the door wouldn’t open. I was now better acquainted with the decorative motif of the public toilet, so I looked for another. I found another and was fully intending to use it but it wouldn’t take my coin and therefore the door wouldn’t open. The opening bass line from a famous Queen song was rising in my mind. Vanilla Ice sampled the riff while I struggled to find an alternate venue. I went through a series of these kiosks and each had some reason it couldn’t be used: broken door, out of order, surrounded by quicksand, those sorts of things. In the end, I had to make like a treeplanter and pee in the park.
I was a little furtive in the process, thinking this was unheard of, or at least inappropriate, but since then, I have seen very many people peeing in the streets, in the parks, in the alleyways, etc. I was walking home past a park the other day and for some reason was watching my feet. I watched myself step up to a rivulet of flowing liquid. I looked up and about ten feet from me was a woman squatting on the sidewalk, peeing. It turns out this is a nation of treeplanters. I have yet to determine whether anyone else has planter’s toe. In a shameless plug for comments I will give a special mention to anyone who can relate a planter’s toe story or I suppose any part of the anatomy that is affiliated with treeplanting afflictions.