The

Undeniable

Ruth

®

…and the Ruth shall set you free!

  • Adventures with my Bashful Bladder

    ·

    Ruth Carter

    Pre–employment drug testing by Francis Storr from Flickr
    Pre–employment drug testing by Francis Storr from Flickr

    I was recently offered an adjunct instructor position at an art college to teach Business Media Law. When they told me that they wanted to hire me, they explained that the next step was a background check and a drug test.

    A drug test. This was going to be fun.

    My problem with drug tests isn’t that I worry about passing. It’s that I generally can’t pee on command.

    I’ve always had a bashful bladder. When I applied to the U.S. Air Force Academy, a drug test is part of the physical. I was there at 7am and I couldn’t make myself pee until after I finished the rest of my tests. About 10 years ago, I participated in one of the Merck HIV vaccine trials. I had to take a pregnancy test before each time I was due for a vaccination. I drank tons of coffee before going to the clinic and it still took forever to get me to pee on command. After that the staff gave me a set of specimen cups and trusted me to pee at home and bring in it with me. It was weird carrying a cup of urine in my purse into the clinic each time.

    Last week I got my official notice of my testing site and that I had 48 hours to complete the test. I drank a bottle of water after my morning coffee and when I started feeling a tickle in my bladder, I headed to the testing site. The gentleman with the African accent showed me to the bathroom and handed me the specimen cup with the instruction that I needed to provide at 50mL sample. I sat down in the stall and tried to think about scenes from my favorite comedians stand-up specials – like Kathy Griffin and Ellen DeGeneres. But no luck – my bladder wasn’t giving in.

    I glumly told the guy that I couldn’t pee and headed back to the waiting room to drink more water and think about humorous things. I paced around the room but thought it would probably be better to sit still. No one may have concentrated more on funny things than I did sitting in that waiting room. Two more bottles of water later, I was ready to try again.

    I sat down in the stall again and started thinking about Tom Green. His early stunts are so stupid and funny. They make me laugh so much.

    Success! After thinking about a few of Tom’s stunts, my bladder let go. Here’s the clip I was thinking about when I was finally able to pee.

    Thanks Tom!

  • Study Break: Time to Smile

    ·

    Ruth Carter

    As the semester winds down I, like many of my classmates, find myself exhausted and stressed most of the time.   With finals on the horizon, we’re spending most of our time outlining and studying for our exams, which are the sole basis for many of our grades.  Yesterday, my friend in the law school’s IT department remarked that it looked like I never left the computer lab all weekend because every time he saw me, I was sitting at the same computer, toiling away at my papers.

    yip yip yip yip yip yip
    Image by It’s Marie the Bee via Flickr

    When I’m studying for hours on end, sometimes I need to take a short break to breathe, relax, and smile.  I am very grateful to certain persons and entities who post videos on YouTube who have made me smile during my law school career.  There is a common theme across all these videos:  the main characters are always doing whatever makes sense to them and it works out in the end.  I think along with making me smile, these videos give me hope that if I keep doing what my gut tells me I should be doing, that everything will work out in the end.

    Here are my top four entities on YouTube that I watch during a study break:

    1. The Yip Yips – These two martians always make me smile with their innocence and honest perspective.  I have memorized nearly every classic clip of  these two encountering objects for the first time.  If I am ever in Sesame Street’s neighborhood, I will seriously contact the show and ask if I could meet these little guys.  Happy happy happy boing boing boing boing!
    2. Foamy – Jonathan Ian Mathers is somewhat of a genius for creating this cartoon squirrel that says what many of us wish we could say.  Foamy’s bluntness and honest perspective on everyday life validates many of my views.  He validates the fact that sometimes life sucks and that people often act in moronic ways.  I look forward to every new video of this creature and the rest of the cast.
    3. Tom Green – I watched a lot of Tom Green videos during my 1L year and tried to pick out how many torts he was committing.  There was a lot of infliction of emotional distress.  I like him because he knows that he’s pushing people’s buttons, but it’s always done with an underlying sense that he means no harm.  It’s usually just to be funny and to see people’s reactions to the unexpected.
    4. Where the Hell is Matt – Matt Harding is proof that the American dream is still alive.  He quit his job and took a trip around the world.  He danced a cheesy jig everywhere he went.  He made a video of his dancing.  Stride liked it so much that they paid for him to do it two more times.  One of the things I like about Matt’s work is that there is no underlying agenda.  He’s just a guy who likes to dance – and he does it in some of the most beautiful places in the world.

    Thank you to everyone who makes studying for finals a little less painful.  To everyone who loves a law student – we’re not going to be completely human for the next few weeks.  Thank you in advance for being patient, loving, and occasionally giving us reasons to smile.

    Enhanced by Zemanta