122 - When you collide into someone in the dark

I live with my grandparents and my aunt, but a few years back, my aunt was living in Toronto and I was sleeping in her room, and my bedroom used to be my mother's. My computer and my desk used to be in the living room, and in the daytime, this annoyed me quite a lot because everybody sitting on the sofa would be looking at what I was doing on the computer, looking at me work, staring at me eat at my desk, gawking at me every time I stood up, or sat down, or suddenly had a phone call that made my phone go vvvt vvvt.

That's when I started staying up at night. I loved the privacy I had to myself to watch 'sensitive' TV shows like Nip/Tuck and Oz, movies like sex-loaded American Pie or freaky horrors like The Exorcist and The Eye. I could stay up all night talking to my friends on the phone, webcamming them, without my family staring at me the whole time, judging me whenever I went into the kitchen just for a snack two times every hour, whenever I stood up to just stretch my legs and shake them about, sing to myself if I wanted to, anything, because the night was mine.

But one thing I noticed during these few years is that my grandfather pees very frequently. He gets up at 1am, 3am and 5am, always those times, always three times, always on time, to pee.

Let me just explain my severe need to bring this up. I'm quite frustrated about this, because you see, this is something quite inappropriate to bring up with a girlfriend, or with your classmates at the dinner table. I'm obligated to keep matters relating to my grandpa's visits to the bathroom to myself. Years of this hurts me, it physically hurts me.

...but anyway, he pees a lot. And since getting my own room, I have encountered him in the dark hallway leading to the bathroom on several occasions when I have felt the urge to urinate. I hate the feeling of bumping into him, because I feel like a total wuss, afraid of an old man in the hall, but I hate it more because I know he's aged and can't take that sort of surprise. I'm really afraid I might literally scare the life out of him.

Ah, well, but he was a firefighter for forty years. I'm sure he'll be around for a long time, no matter how many times we happen to have our bladders in sync. I guess I just hate the feeling of being frightened over nothing.

Ever collided into someone in the dark? Don't you hate the feeling too?