I think it's really cute that your best friend when you were at primary school was a boy, Littlekat. At the first school I went to (for a year and half a term) it was considered perfectly normal for girls and boys to be friends and play together; but then we moved out of town and into a little village, where there was a strict unspoken rule that girls only played with girls and boys only played with boys, and I found that really confusing.
I feel really sorry for him wetting his pants at school when he was 7 because the teacher wouldn't let him go. It really upsets me when I hear of kids having accidents like that ... and there are a LOT of similar stories in circulation, so it seems far too common a thing, I'm afraid. I'm glad that you had the courage to get up and go even though you had been told you couldn't, and that your near misses remained just that. I wet my knickers at school once when I was 6, and it really was one of the most upsetting experiences I have ever had