I woke up this morning thinking that I had to pee like a Russian race horse. I haven’t been around horses enough since my teens to remember how they pee but it’s phrase my husband used all the time. I hadn’t thought about that idiom in years and I’ve never tried to track down its origin before today.
My husband was brought up on a farm that used work horses to plow the fields before 1955 when his father bought their first tractor. A brand new blue Ford that I had to sell after Don died in this century. I tried to get him to agree to sell it after his stroke when we had an auction at the pole barn where we stored his heavy equipment but I was afraid it would give him another stroke if I sold it without his agreement. So I had it moved to a small storage unit where it sat eating up money until he died. Well, not really. The antique value of the tractor off-set the twelve years of storage fees. Tip for the day: Never try to have an argument with a stubborn stroke survivor with only a 25 word vocabulary. Sympathy will make you lose most of the time, especially when his face gets beet red and he’s holding on to your hand for dear life and repeating the word, “Please” over and over again.
I could not find a source that I totally trusted for an explanation for the ‘pee like a Russian race horse’ idiom but someone on a Reddit forum said it came about when Americans started betting on race horses only the phrase was “pissing like a rushin’ horse.” Another forum user wrote: “Some claim that the expression is negative because Russian trainers (or the Russian mafia) cheated by feeding their horses a lot of water…and somehow prevented them from urinating thus making them nervous and faster. People saw the horses nervously peeing before a race. If a horse did this before the race it was an advantage since it could lose up to 10 pounds. In the ‘70s trainers started giving a drug called "lasix" to their horses.”
Another Reddit user from Southern Indiana wrote this: I've always said, "I have to pee like a rushin' racehorse". Meaning that the horse was in such a hurry (or rushing) to get to the finish line, because he had to Pee so bad. That's how all the people around me interpret it. I can see how Rushin' can get mixed up with Russian.”
None of this gives me a clue how and where my husband picked up the idiom. My best guess is he heard it at basic training. Anyway, today was the first time in my life I remember comparing myself to a Russian race horse and I hope it’s the last. But it does occur to me that I’m being drugged like a race horse to pee on queue. I take a pill at night that cuts down on me waking up to mild bladder urges so that I can get a better quality of sleep---and no, I don’t wet the bed taking them. I get 'false' urges when my bladder isn’t full. Isn’t that amazing. They have pills to make you quit peeing and pills to make you pee.
Getting enough sleep has been an ongoing problem since I moved to the continuum care campus. First it was the bright parking lot lights that lit up my bedroom like its daytime, messing with the circadian rhythms that ques us to when to sleep. After six months of complaining about that the management agreed to buy us all black out shades to address the problem. Then I got into the habit of watching two hours of TV in bed before I turn it off. Actually, I’ve been watching TV in bed for the better part of my life but the TV in my bedroom, now, is smarter than my old bedroom TV that is now in my living room. The smart ones emits UV rays which also mess with your circadian rhythm. Don’t suggest I swap my TVs around. It wouldn’t work. We have no cable connection in our bedrooms here and to watch Netflix's in the living room I’d have to buy a new TV that can stream. If you’d ever dropped off a TV at the county electronics recycling center you’d understand the sick feeling I get when I think of getting rid of a TV that still works great with cable. I just can’t do it. My parents were Depression Era people who imprinted on me the habit of never throwing out things that still work and around here, The Salvation Army and Goodwill will not take TVs.
But for ten dollars I may have solved my screen-time-in-bed problem. I bought a pair of clear glasses that block the UV light. I put them on when I go to bed to watch TV. I thought it would take time to experience a difference in my ability to fall asleep---if it did at all. I’ve only had them five days and all five nights I got sleepy at 12:30 to 1:00 instead of 2:00! If this keeps up I’m going to have my next pair of prescription glasses made to block out the UV rays for all the hours I spend in front of my computer. In the meantime I've learned to use my Kindle safer by using the Blue Shade timer setting and that’s got to help too---assuming I remember to grab my Kindle instead of looking up random idioms on the computer in the evening hours.
Until Next Wednesday. ©
Photo Note: You haven't lived until you've let someone drag you to an antique tractor show, not once but every year for a decade. It was Don's dream to show his farm tractor one day. This show was in Sussex, UK. We didn't go there but they all look (and smell) the same. If my memory serves me right the idea with the steam powered tractors was to see how slow you could go before killing the engines or maybe it was the goal with the gasoline engines? Or both? Not sure and I'm too lazy to look it up.
