Ellen and Dee just finished putting the last dish back into the cupboard. Mrs. Sanford had little Brian on the living room floor where she was changing a very full diaper. Bob and Kim Beebe were sitting together on the davenport reading the evening paper. Over to one side of the dining room Gary and Jon were building some kind imaginary city with building blocks.

The old grandfather clock just struck chimes to announce 8 P.M. The clock hardly finished the chime when the front door bell rang.

"I'll get it," Jon yelled out as he ran past his mom and jumped over little Brian. He swung the front door open wide in just one pull. The boy's mouth dropped open in surprise, for who should be standing there in all her finery but.... Jason's mom!

"Oh! Oh!........". Jon jumped back from the door way. All he could do was stand their with a silly little smile forming on his startled face. He wanted to run and hide but it was much too late. He stood there as if frozen staring up at Jason's Mom's frowning face.

Jon never even had on shoes or socks. He was only in a double diaper looking more like one of the Rugrats than the rugrats.

"Little boy, please get me your mother." the lady at the door ordered while she looked him over head to foot and back up again.

"Mommy, MOMMY!" Jon yelled at the top of his lungs, not so much because he wanted his mother to hear him as to the fear he was feeling at the moment.

Mrs. Sanford came running, not sure what had happened to her little boy that sounded like he was being murdered. "What is it, Jon?"........ "Oh, hello, can I help you......." She asked the woman at the door.

"Mrs. Beebe, I am Karan Brown, John Dean's daughter next door." Karan introduced herself.

"Glad to met you, Karan, but I am not Mrs. Beebe, I am Mrs. Sanford, I am just staying with the Beebe's to help them with their baby, Brian. I'll go get Mrs. Beebe for you..." Mrs. Sanford started to call out for Kim.

"OH! is this the baby, this one in diapers?" Karan asked of Jon.

"No, that's my boy, he is almost 10 now, no... Brian's not quite a year old yet," Mrs. Sanford walked away shaking her head with a chuckle.

"So, your Jason's mother?" Jon asked for nothing better to say. "Mr. Dean told us about Jason. We were with him this afternoon......."

"Yes, I know..... I took him home, remember, little boy," Karan remarked rather abruptly as she took another quick look at the diapered boy.

Kim Beebe came to the door, reaching out her hand in friendship invited Karan to enter. Jon stepped out of the way allowing the lady to pass by on her way into the living room.

Karan had to sidestep Brian, who was still lying on the diaper pad, not yet quite diapered with only one pin fastened, the other side open. Each time baby Brian would kick his little legs the open part of the diaper would flop back and forth exposing about all that made him a boy.

Karan quickly made her way to one of the chairs where she was bid to sit down. Kim sat next to Bob as she introduced Karan to the family.

Both Kim and Bob turned to see what Karan had her eyes so fixed upon. It was Gary standing in the dining room doorway with both hands out stretched holding against each door frame. He had stopped in the doorway just in time to see Mrs. Brown, but not before it was too late to escape her vision of him.

"That is Gary, our son" Bob told Karan.

"Yesssssss! We met this afternoon." Karan seemed more disgusted then before. "How old is your boy, Mrs. Beebe?"

"He will be turning 11 shortly after school starts".

"I'm sure he is......." Karan could not keep her thoughts any longer and came straight out and asked the driving question. Looking down by her feet where Brian was getting into his sleepers with the help of Mrs. Sanford, "I can understand this boy in diapers but..... Well, what are these other boys doing in diapers.... I mean.... 10 and 11? Isn't that just a little old for baby diapers?"

To everyone else in the room her question was like a joke, but not for Karan, who just had two run-ins with this strange family.

Bob, being sensitive to her feelings, was the first to explain. "Karan, we are sorry, but you see, some boys, more than is publicly known, need to have some kind of protection for various reasons. Some boys have wetting problems longer then other boys do. Other boys have trouble messing themselves because of a variety of problems. These two boys have more wetting accidents than the messing ones, but we have found it to be more in their interest to wear a diaper then to have the embarrassment of wet or dirty pants. We, my wife and I, find it more to our liking to have the boys in diapers at night then to have to be awakened in the night to help clean up a mess that can be so easily avoided by a simple diaper.

"Don't it seem a bit odd that boys so old as these couldn't control themselves just a little bit more so they would not have to wear such..... baby-like things.... a diaper?" Karan had a bit of sarcasm.

The two boys had decided it was time for them to leave the adults on their own, so they returned to the dining room and their toys. "Adults are so......." Gary could not think of the word to describe them. "Ya, I won't be like that when I grow up" said Jon.

"To tell you the truth, Karan, older boys that do wear diapers actually prefer to wear them than using regular underpants. It gives them comfort, they enjoy the confining feel that it gives to them. Besides they prefer the diaper over exposing a wet spot in the front of their jeans or a wet bed in the night."

"Are you telling me that these two great big boys would want their classmates to see them in diapers rather then real dress." Karan was holding her own for now.

"No, not at all," Bob answered her in a serious tone, "No, the boys do not go about exposing their diapers to their friends at school or anywhere else. In fact, were have just begun to discuss if they would be wearing them to school or not. If they want to do so, and it should be up to them, we will find ways to keep it hidden, there are several ways to do this. What they do not want to happen at all is to have an accident and that would be a much worse embarrassment than to be seen in a diaper."

"If my Jason, my little 8 year old boy, had to live like that, I would be taking him to a doctor. Today they have many ways to over come such a problem," Karan argued her side of the issue. "That is true, Karan, but some of those methods you speak of can cause more serious problems. You need to read and study up on some of the `drugs' used to `control' these wettings or weak bowel control. The so-called cure is worst then the problem. Some of these so-called cures can cause damage to kidneys, etc. What these cures do is only override the child's normal body functions. They force what the body is trying to do naturally."

"Well, I really don't know about these things, but I do know that when I went to get Jason this afternoon and found him playing with two older boys wearing diapers I was very shocked. I just don't want my son to...... well, be like that."

"Like, what?" Kim coming into this heated conversion. "Both of these boys are just normal boys that happen to wear a diaper instead of underpants. Would you allow your Jason to wear underpants?"

"Of course, but underpants are normal, diapers are only for babies, it is not normal for a older boy to wear them." Karan let these words fly out without counting the hurt they may cause. Covering her mouth she suddenly realized what she just said. "I'm so sorry, I did not mean that. Please forgive me!"

"Mrs. Brown!" Dee said in a very low and soft voice. "I only know this, and I am only 12 years old, but, I saw my little brother, Jon when he was so shy and had a very low esteem of himself because he wet himself several times a day. He was so sad and would not look other people in the eye, he was hurting because of his wetting problem. This also caused him to keep away of other kids, afraid to go to their house because he might be embarrassed. But when he met Gary and his family, Jon soon found a way to stop the embarrassment. Now, today, he is a happy and delightful boy. Diapers had added the protection and comfort he needed. So why should he be made to look like a joke because he just wears a diaper?"

"Karan, there is another good argument for wearing diapers," Bob Beebe spoke up. "Look at it in this way, boys that wear briefs or boxer shorts are not made fun of, just because they wear them. You, and many other uninformed adults, have seen the diaper only as a baby product, not different from a baby bottle or the pins that hold them. Babies do use a bottle to drink milk. So do adults, they call it a glass. Babies use pins to hold their diapers together. Have you ever used a safety pin to hold part of your clothing, sure you have. Babies use blankets, but so do you."

"I don't understand," Karan was now listening with interest.

"What Bob is getting at is this," Kim butted in, "think of a diaper as nothing more then a pair of underpants. The only difference is that underpants will not stop wetting from leaking nor will they protect or hold a bowel moment. Diapers will do all underpants do but with the added protection from both wetting and bowel moments. They can and do give a boy a sense of self-esteem. They are a comfort to a boy to know he is not going to show the world that he wets or what."

Karan thought for a moment before she made any other statements. She was beginning to see this diaper thing in a different light.

"I had Jason potty trained by the time he was 2 years old," Karan showed her pride in getting Jason out of diapers. "I got so tired of changing and washing the dirty things...... I was so happy when Jason got where he would run to the potty. I bought him some cute little panties, he was so proud of them." "He even helped me pack his cloth diapers away and never mentioned them again."

Ellen broke into the diaper talk. "I wonder, Karan, had Jason ever wet himself after you got him out of diapers?"

"Yes, we had our little accidents," Karan smiled.

"How did you handle those little accidents?" Ellen asked.

"I just reasoned with him that he was a big boy now and big boys don't wet their pants. But when he would poop, that is when I had to make him see what it did to me having to clean up such a mess." Karan was nodding her head as if to convince the others that she was right.

"Did you think he did that on purpose?" "Did your scolding stop him from doing it?" Dee asked.

"I don't think he did it on purpose..... I made sure he knew just how much extra work it made for me."

"You punished him for his accidents that he did not do on purpose?" Bob asked.

"Well, yes sometimes, but he learned to go potty when he had to."

There was a lot more conversation going on, but Karan seemed to be taking a second look at this diaper thing. She promised to read some of the books that Bob and Kim gave her about boys that need diapers.

Bob added one more thing to his argument for diapers. "Karan, all our talk about older boys in diapers would not be complete without my giving you one more thing to consider. It is this, I have not heard of any girl that ever made this statement, but I have heard it from many boys that would talk about it. Most boys that do wear diapers find them a joy to wear even if they are made fun of when found out. There is something about a boy and diapers that girls will never understand. These boys find pleasure in their diapers. It is just plain a pleasure to be into a tight, thick diaper. I am not too sure I could explain it, either, but I do know this to be true. You may ask Gary about it after you get to know him better. I am sure he would tell you that for all the reasons to wear a diaper it is the pleasure he gets from it that keeps him wanting to use them."

Karan would not answer Bob on this one, being a girl she could not compare his statement with anything she would know about it.

Karan was about to leave. She told the family and friends that she came over to find out what was going on because she knew the boys would be playing together and she was concerned for her boy to be around what she called `diaper boys'. But she made a few comments that gave clue she that heard and was thinking about the subject.

"Dad has talked to me about Jason's potty training, he feels much as you do, but Jason is 8 now and I just don't think he will want to go back into diapers this time in his life. Thank you for your enlightening explanations. I do think that if Jason ever went back wetting the bed I would be tempted to place him into diapers for awhile. Good night, hope we can get together again soon?

The girls and adults bid her a good night as they closed the door. Ellen watched Karan as she walked back into John's house.

Gary and Jon were listening in from the dining room. They had heard most of the latter part of the conversation. Gary took Jon by the arm and pulled him out of earshot of his parents.

"I think I know how we can get Jason into diapers." Gary whispered.

"How?" Jon asked.

"When I get it worked out I will tell you!" Gary's mind was spinning into activity.