Mrs. Perals invited us to come back inside the house. She had prepared milk and cookies.

“I have to go over to Billy’s house for a few minutes. Carl is in his room. Keep an eye on him until I get back.” She left carrying three large shopping bags—the diapers and plastic pants that were being returned. We sat silently eating our milk and cookies. Tim sighed loudly; I sighed loudly. What else was there to say?

This school vacation wasn’t turning out anything like we thought it would.

Mrs. Perals returned just a few minutes later. We were still at the table finishing our snack.

“I’m back,” she said stating the obvious. “Are you finished?”

“Yeah, I guess, so” Tim answered sullenly. “Good,” she answered, ignoring Tim’s bad mood. “Let’s go up to Carl’s room and see if he wants to play.”

“But, mom…,” Tim began.

“I know… but things are different now.”

I puzzled over this exchange as we made our way up the stairs. Mrs. Perals led the way into Carl’s room. He was sitting on a window seat, looking out toward the street. He didn’t turn around or acknowledge our presence in any way. I felt a little uncomfortable in his presence. A toy village with cars, roads, and garages was set up on the floor. “Oh, look. Carl has set up his village,” Mrs. Perals observed. “Why don’t you boys play for a while?”

Tim had a funny look on his face. He shrugged his shoulders and sat down on the floor. I joined him. Mrs. Perals excused herself and left the room.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“I guess we play,” Tim answered. In the beginning it felt kind of funny acting like a four-year old, pushing our cars around the roads, having imaginary crashes, and filling up our tanks at the gas station. But Tim and I loosened up quickly and we were soon making vrooming and screeching-brake noises to accompanying our play. It was actually kind of fun. Despite our best efforts, though, Carl didn’t pay any attention to us. Mrs. Perals returned about a half-hour later.

“I think that’s enough for today, boys. Why don’t you find something else to do? I almost forgot… before you go, let me check your diapers.”

I was glad that we didn’t need to be changed. I would have felt really uncomfortable getting my diaper changed with Carl in the room—even if he was totally ignoring me. Tim suggested that we watch TV. We turned it on just in time for the Three Stooges. During the first commercial break I wanted to talk to Tim about what had just happened (or, in my mind, didn’t happen) in Carl’s room.

“I guess it proves that you were right,” he said.

“Huh? How do you figure that?” I answered in surprise.

“It’s been a long time since I went into Carl’s without him making a big fuss. You saw him today—he even let us play with his toys! Even though you probably think he was ignoring us, he wasn’t. He knew exactly what we were doing and he let us continue doing it. Even more amazing, he let you, a stranger, into his room. He usually screeches in terror when people he doesn’t know get near him. It’s got to be the diapers that make the difference.”

Mrs. Perals must have overheard us. We jumped a little bit when she spoke from the doorway.

“You’re right. Timmy. Isn’t this exciting? What a change you boys have brought about! Billy, I can’t thank you enough for suggesting diapers as the solution. I’m sure that Carl will be more receptive to learning if you boys are helping out. But, in order to build on today’s success, you have to make sure that he never sees you out of diapers. You do promise that you will always wear diapers until Carl learns everything he can possibly learn?”

“OK,” we answered.

Her eyes glistened with tears as she bent down and gave each of us a kiss on the cheek before leaving the room.

“What made you change your mind?” Tim asked.

“About what?” I responded.

“About wearing diapers to school,” he explained.

“I’m not wearing diapers to school!” I objected.

“Then why did you just promise my mom that you would always wear diapers until Carl finishes learning?”

“I meant I would always were them over here,” I answered heatedly.

“That’s not what you said,” he said self-righteously.

“Well, it’s what I meant,” I answered in a tone that suggested that the discussion was over. “By the way,” I added, “how come your mom called you Timmy instead of Tim?” A look of horror crossed his face. “Oh, brother! She hasn’t called me that since I was in second grade.”

“It must be the diapers,” I said smugly.

Near the end of the show, my mom arrived with Tim’s new diapers.

“Mr. Parker was very accommodating,” I heard my mom explain to Mrs. Perals, “he took back all the unopened packages. He also gave us the same 10% discount as before. Oh, by the way, I selected quieter plastic pants for the boys to wear during the day. I thought it would be less embarrassing for them.”

“Yes, I see,” Mrs. Perals answered.

“Here are the new nighttime diapers. They have four layers of flannel but the center section is made up of eight layers of terry cloth. I’m sure that they will do for overnight wear. If not, Mr. Parker says that he can order some diaper doublers from the manufacturer, although he agrees that that should be unnecessary. He doesn’t generally keep a lot of these in stock so he only had six on hand—I kept three for Billy. He says that the rest should arrive by next Tuesday.”

“Thank you so much for taking care of everything,” Mrs. Perals said.

“Now, I have to tell you our little bit of news.” In a very excited voice, she recounted how Tim and I had spent a half hour playing in Carl’s room and what his lack of objection meant.

“And, just a few minutes ago,” she concluded, “Timmy and Billy repeated their promise to stick with this until we were reasonably sure that Carl had progressed as far as he could go. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate Billy’s willingness to wear diapers twenty-four hours a day.”

I didn’t hear my mom’s answer. I was distracted by Tim’s smug, “I told you so.”

I couldn’t believe that I had let myself get cornered again. There was no way that my mom and dad would let me break a promise that they thought I had made to Mrs. Perals.

“Yeah, Timmy,” I said sarcastically, “I guess we’re both in it all the way.”

My little jab seemed to bounce right off of him. ****