This story is not from the Onion or the IGnoble web site, but it sure could be. I can’t resist.

There you are squeezing your legs together to make your bladder behave, if only for a few moments. It could be anywhere. Squirming in your chair at a meeting. Standing at a counter in a deli waiting for your sandwich. These are the moments of acute social consciousness and an overwhelming desire to be elsewhere. But what should you really be doing? According to research published in Psychological Science [Inhibitory Spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains] you perhaps should be making important decisions about your future.

Here’s the inner dialog: “Oh jeez, I gotta pee. I can hold it. Yes. Quick, what’s the most important decision I need to make soon? Time to get rid of the old car? Nah, I’ll wait till it quits running. Oh, that running idea…. How about where I’ll take my date? Too bloody many options! I can’t think of them all now, no time. What do I want for dinner? Soup…not soup, it’s…wet! Mmmmph. I can’t think of anything.”

The researchers from the Netherlands and Belgium reckon the act of holding one’s bladder in check also contributes to focusing the mind and decreasing unwarranted impulses. They proved it experimentally. Some poor undergraduate blokes were made to drink a superfluity of water and wait around (about 40 minutes) until the input/output cycle kicked in. Then they were given eight problems to solve, things like “Would you rather have 16 Euros now or 30 Euros in 35 days?” I mean, I would’ve embarrassed myself right there, thinking that there was no way anybody would give me 16 Euros, much less 35.

Conversely, say the researchers, stores should have handy bathrooms near their big ticket impulse buy items, like big TV screens. An empty bladder belies an empty mind or something like that. Interesting observations, perhaps; but is this piss-poor science? Not really, of course, just a little out of the mainstream.

Next time I have the impulse to write something like this, I promise I’ll wait until my bladder runneth over.