Heather Christena Schmidt

Peegate. If you are thinking that I’m talking about urine. Human waste. Pee. Pee pee. Wee wee. A scandal about wee wee of Watergate proportions.

You would be correct.

Today we had tennis lessons in the morning for the kids. After getting them there, my husband and I decided to run home and throw dinner in the oven. When we left home to go pick the kids up from tennis, my husband happened to notice something shocking happening outside our home.

A mother had pulled over, taken her kid out of the car, and was letting the kid (5 or 6 years old) pee all over the bushes and sidewalk. Private property bushes and public sidewalk. Where children play.

I, frankly, was at first shocked. In fact, I double-taked a few times. I mean really, who does something like this?

Then I considered my obligations. As the coordinator of my neighborhood watch group, and after hearing about incidences like this happening through out the community in the past, I figured it was time to mention it. So I posted in the community Facebook group, as well as the neighborhood watch group.

But before I could even have an opportunity to extend the posts to our other affiliated sites, the mommies started commenting.

They thought it OK. In fact, they thought that if a family is out for a stroll, they should be able to drop their drawers and pop a whiz wherever and whenever they want.

They defended the mom’s choice. In spite of the fact that less than two blocks away – a 1 minute drive – there are a host of stores with bathrooms available. And that less than one mile away – a 3 minute drive – there is a public park with public restrooms.

They still erred on the side of the mother.

One person even went so far as to say that if a child has the stomach flu – the norovirus – that they should be able to pull over and have the child take a shit in a person’s bushes and lawn. When I went to highlight the fact that this would actually be a public health emergency, that commenter seemed to recognize the absurdity of this statement, and deleted her comment.

Just…let that…sink in a moment…

And then the personal attacks started. People told me I should stop nagging. They told me I should relinquish my neighborhood watch coordinator duties to someone else. They said I needed to “get a life” and one person emailed me and told me to go to hell.

It all got out of hand, and all over a little wee wee.

The bottom line of the situation is this: public urination, even of a minor child, is illegal. If a police officer had seen that, the mother could have been fined, or worse – if she became belligerent – arrested. Moreover, urinating on someone else’s lawn is a no brainer: there is never a scenario in which that is OK. This isn’t like the fucking sticks either. We live in the suburbs. A townhouse community in which houses are stacked atop each other. You whiz on someone’s bushes, you whiz on their patio, neighboring plants, and side walk too. By posting about this, I was simply highlighting as neighborhood watch coordinator a safety and legality issue.

But even when I tried to quell the situation with a level-headed comment, things just continued to spiral out of control.

I recognized at that point the issue:

We live in an entitlement culture. An entitlement culture so hellbent on what they are owed that they seriously believe it is justifiable to excrete human waste on another person’s personal property.

If it sounds absurd to you, you are in the right. If you understand the reasons behind the law, you get the hygiene reasons behind it.

If you think it’s OK to let your kid piss in somebody’s yard, please move along.

The end result of Peegate is that there are a lot of changes that will need to be made to the way our neighborhood watch group shares issues in the community. That’s a positive, in my opinion – no matter how much drama it took to get there. We actually lost two block captains over the issue, to which I say: good riddance. We gained a new one in a key area, and she promises her street as been pee-free for ten years.

I want to know what you guys think. Do you think that there are some laws that were made to be broken? And if so, is Peegate one of them? Would you ever urinate in someone’s yard? Or is this the most uncouth, redneck thing you could ever imagine to come out of the the suburbs?

I’m thinking of making yard signs that people can post saying things like “Peegate: it’s cool to make a wee wee if you need need.” Or, for the flip side: “This lawn accepts strange dumps.”

Sounds absurd, right?