EDITOR’S NOTE: The Loneliest Runner was on the CBS Late Movie on August 12 and December 15, 1987.

This was written, produced and directed by Michael Landon, who really was the loneliest runner. That’s because he wet his bed until he was 14 and his mother hung his sheets out to dry so that all the neighborhood kids could see that he couldn’t sleep a night without pissing himself.

During his childhood, Landon had to deal with his mother threatening suicide. On a family beach vacation, she tried to drown herself, but he rescued her. Later, his mother acted as if nothing happened, and the stress of this led to him bedwetting even more.

Before he tore his shoulder, Landon wanted to be a javelin thrower. Instead, he became a teenage werewolf, a cowboy, a settler and an angel on the road.

John Curtis (Lance Kerwin) can’t sleep a night without getting the bed soaked and not from wet dreams. No, he urinates the sack nightly and runs to a local laundromat and washes the sheets when his parents are asleep. He also stays up all night during sleepovers. You would too if you had parents like Arnold (Brian Keith) and Alice (DeAnn Mears). She yells at both of them for being less than men and in response, Arnold slaps his son around. This makes him leak the sheets even more.

A young girl, Nancy Rizzi (Melissa Sue Anderson) shows interest, but all John can think about is running home to get those stained sheets down every day. However, his mother’s horrible parenting skills and his father’s inability to reveal that he also was a bedwetter means that he learns how to run fast. Really fast. He makes it to the Olympics, his father tells his mother to shut up and he gets the girl.

This movie inspired “Peanut Butter, Eggs, and Dice,” an episode of Mr. Show in which “The Bob Lamonta Story” is told.

Despite the earnestness of this film, it’s heart is in the right place. It was a staple of made for TV movies and it made me worry every night when I went to bed, sure that I’d be peeing everywhere. When I woke up and the bed was dry, I thanked Michael Landon.

You can watch this on YouTube.