Youth is wasted on the young, they say, and like most old people, I have regrets. There are so many things I'd do different, smarter, if I could do it all again. I regret jobs I should have quit sooner, people I lost contact with, a few people I should've contacted with a punch in the nose. I regret women I shouldn't have dated, and a few I never mustered the courage to ask out — and I regret the latter lots more than the former.

The only thing I got absolutely right in my whole dang life was my wife. I won the lottery when she came along for twenty-plus years of no regrets at all.

Ah, to be young again. And if by some miracle of modern science fiction I actually could have my youth restored, you know what's the very first thing I'd do?

I would take a twenty-second piss. Unzip, drain the spigot, rezip, maybe wash my hands, and it's over.

When I was young, it took twenty seconds or so to pee, every time. I could reliably flush the toilet about fifteen seconds into my pee, knowing I had about five seconds of pee-time remaining, because it took longer than that for the water to swirl down the drain.

Sincerely, I miss those quick pees. I miss 'em ten or twelve times daily, when I'm back at the porcelain doing the slow pee instead. Unzip, wait, wait a little longer, then start strong but quickly taper off to a trickle, stand and trickle and stand and trickle, usually for more than a minute — and even then I'm usually stopping before I'm finished. To completely relieve myself, all the way to the last drop, could take two minutes or longer.

I have the same amount of pee inside me as when I was young, but it takes much, much longer to get it out of me.

Doc prescribed some pills several years ago, but there was no Larry David effect. The pills took weeks to kick in, and then reduced my pee-time from a minute to maybe 45 seconds. And they were expensive pills. It wasn't worth the price, for such a slight improvement.

So I stopped taking the pills, and it's back to a minute or two standing there, for every pee. I bring my glasses, because I can get through half an article in the AVA while standing there, dribbling slowly.

I've never gotten used to the slow pees, either. I still think I can cheat and flush while I'm still peeing, but nope; the water in the toilet swirls and goes down the pipes, and fresh water comes in to replace it, and I'm still standing there peeing ... and peeing ... and peeing.

When it's the middle of the night I'll sometimes sit to pee, because I'm too old to hold a steady aim when I'm sleepy and standing up for two minutes. This morning, sitting there in the middle of the night, I fell asleep on the toilet, and slept soundly for two hours, waking with a sore neck only when I heard my alarm clock going off in the bedroom.

I had dreamed of peeing quickly.