I've been known to have slight genuine accidents (usually of a dribble-before-reaching-toilet or laugh-too-hard-and-spurt variety), so I thought that wearing a pad might save me some anxiety and embarrassment. We'd had a couple of beers at one bar, and I needed to go, but not too terribly. We were standing in line to get into another bar when my roommate said something really funny and I burst out laughing. Normally, I (like most girls) would've clenched my thighs together to keep from wetting myself. I was about to (clench, that is), then remembered that I was wearing that surprisingly absorbent incontinence pad. So I just maintained my normal posture, although doubling over a bit with laughter. Sure enough, a spurt of pee came out into the pad. If I'd clenched my thighs right then, I probably would've been able to get control. I didn't though, and I didn't. After the first spurt came a steady stream. I was still laughing, and the stream flowed with the rhythm of my laughter; trickling as I inhaled, spurting with force when I exhaled. I stopped laughing and stood up straight when I realized I might be in trouble. I tried to clench my bladder muscles, but I was only able to reduce my peeing from a torrent to more of a weak stream. If I tried to clench my legs together, I would squish the pad and the pee would run right down my legs. I focused all of my effort on stopping peeing. It didn't really work; I finally stopped because I was more or less empty. I must've peed for thirty or forty solid seconds. I stood there mortified, knowing that the pad had held all of the pee, but thinking that if I moved at all, it would leak and wet my jeans. I tried to act as normally as possible while moving as little as possible. When we got inside, I went to the bathroom. I carefully pulled down my pants and sat on the toilet and peed (turns out I wasn't quite empty after all). The pad was fully sodden, to be sure, but my underwear and jeans were perfectly dry. The pee was absorbing well into the pad; I had the feeling that I could've put the pad back on and worn it without fear of the pee squelching out when I sat down at the bar. I didn't want to take the chance, though. I threw it away and just crumpled some toilet tissue into the gusset of my panties (like that'd help). I rejoined my roomies and our evening proceeded without further incident. I was glad in that case to have been wearing a pad (especially that particular pad; some of the less substantial ones would've doubtless overflowed), although I think I would've been able to contain the flow by crossing my legs if I had followed my first instinct.
Anyway, I don't think I'll ever go back to using maxipads now. I used to put on a Kotex and wet it thoroughly at night before I went to bed. About half the time, it'd be leaking onto my panties by morning. With the bladder control pads, I wake up wet (yay) but not outside of the pad. I love it. My only fear is that I'm not sure how nosy my roomies are; I don't know what they'll think if they find the dozens and dozens of incontinence pads I have hidden around my room. They'd probably think that I had a really weak bladder with very poor control, which is a better thing for them to think, I guess, than that I'm some kind of weirdo who gets off on wetting her pants every day.