I got to pee!

Everyone has that dream where he or she is at the workplace or at school, and is for some reason, naked. I'm sure there is some psychobabble explanation about vulnerability. Well, what if it happens in real life? And not just before a limited group of acquaintances, but before the highest court in the land, and recorded for all of posterity?

Well, it happened in oral arguments of Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 64 (1995). The case was whether a school district could require drug testing of student athletes. In the excerpt below, the questions were being asked by Justice Breyer, and Mr. Christ is attorney for the respondent, Acton.

QUESTION: All right. Well then, the problem, of course, for people is, if they can require the physical exams for the health, and I guess you could require medical--metal detectors to keep guns out of schools, a lot of things you can require, what's different about this?
MR. CHRIST: Because this is so highly intrusive.
QUESTION: Medical exams all involve urinalyses.
MR. CHRIST: That's--
QUESTION: I've probably had hundreds of them in my life, and so have you, and you know, what's the special thing here?
MR. CHRIST: The medical exam you're talking about is being conducted in private by the student's doctor. It is not being conducted--
QUESTION: Well, people urinate, you know, in men's rooms all over the country. It's not necessarily--and I don't mean to be--trivialize it, but it isn't really a tremendously private thing, is it?
MR. CHRIST: I think it is private when it is being compelled by the Government, and the Government is there watching and observing and collecting specimens.
QUESTION: All right. What I'm trying to get you to do is to pinpoint precisely what it is that's the intrusion of the privacy interest. That's what I'm trying--
MR. CHRIST: It's not--
QUESTION: That's what I'm aiming at.
MR. CHRIST: It's not the mere act. We all urinate. That's--has to be conceded.
(Laughter.)
MR. CHRIST: In fact, I might do so here, if--

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled for the school district, to add to the humiliation.