There are very few things in one’s life that are perfectly acceptable for you to carry over from childhood into adulthood.

But as a recent trip to one of Louisville’s late night bastions proved, there are a few things from our Sesame Street days that we can hold onto like pure … well … gold.

So a few of my friends and I managed to wind up at a Steak-n-Shake after mixing several colors and different types of alcohol in the midst of a 21st birthday celebration. My friend, who had just turned 21, asked me to join her in the bathroom.

Like any good friend, I obliged. ?

It’s all a bit hazy, but I remember her sitting on the toilet and seeing her get up to buckle her pants. She then looked at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.

“Lindsay, I think I just peed my pants,” she said in a voice that was very close to tears. ?

As I looked down and saw a river of urine running down her faded boot cut jeans, I began wondering why she even bothered to sit on the toilet.

She obviously missed a step somewhere. ?

I’m realizing lately that my friends and I have problems with drinking and holding our bladders.

Granted, mornings with wet pants and intolerable embarrassment may only happen once a semester – or even once a year – but it happens, and the more I talk about it, the more I hear stories about other people and their inability to control their bladders.

The following morning, the Steak-n-Shake birthday girl had no idea that her pants were soaked in pee and that we had gotten kicked out of the restaurant for being absolutely drunk and disruptive.

She wasn’t really embarrassed because she realized that these things happen all the time.

Plus, it was her 21st birthday, and nothing you do really counts on that sacred holiday.

My friend isn’t alone with her peeing problem.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve peed the bed in my adolescence age of reasoning. In fact, I’ve even managed to pee in the Herald sports columnist’s bed after a night of drinking with his roommate when he was out of town.

I woke up surrounded by an odorless liquid that part of me still wants to insist was spilled water. But I replaced his bedding with low thread count pink sheets from Wal-Mart and tried to pretend it was a thing of the past. ?

You might insist that it’s just me, or maybe the people I’m surrounded by.

But I’ve heard heinous stories involving people peeing on laundry baskets, on computer keyboards, in front of their parents and on couches in fraternity houses.

It’s time we all band together and adopt the rule Alcoholics Anonymous so cleverly created. Let’s admit our shortcomings and let our admittance guide us to recovery.

Scream it from the rooftops and share your story of accidental urination; it’s quite liberating.

And please don’t make fun of me in class; my face will turn red and I might just pee myself a little.

Introducing Lindsay

Oh, and just so I’m not just known as the girl who peed herself for the next week until my next column, I’ll tell you a little bit more about myself. I am a 5-foot-3 journalism major and English minor who loves to talk about things that don’t really matter. I’m a Gemini from Louisville who has a pet rabbit named Rex that is potty-trained. Thursday is my favorite day of the week. My vices include nail biting, celebrity gossip and the failure to separate “Sex and the City” from reality.

Lindsay Sainlar’s humor column will run in Thursday editions of the Herald. You can reach her at [email protected].

This commentary does not reflect the views of the Herald, Western or its administration.