The next morning, Willie tried to claim that he had caught my cold and that he shouldn’t go to school. Mom wouldn’t go for it. He made quite a scene when she tried to change him into his new daytime diaper and diaper doubler. Elaine wound up having to do it, which hardly made him feel any better. I guess I understood his fear—what with Terrell having seen him at Mrs. Morrison’s. I was given a small gym bag containing four changes and two notes, one for the nurse and one for my PE teacher, Mr. Relling. I wasn’t too concerned about the nurse. She was already used to my going to her office for diaper changes, which I was allowed to do in private. I wondered how much grief Mr. Relling would give me. He didn’t like people being exempted from PE, even for a short period of time. I wondered how he would react to a permanent exemption.

I was the last to get changed into a daytime diaper. The extra material of the doubler between my legs felt funny. I went for my pants when I remembered that Winnie had hidden them yesterday afternoon. I went down to the den to get them.

“Come on, Wade,” my dad said. “Get a move on or you’ll miss your bus.”

“Winnie hid my pants yesterday!” I explained as I walked into to den to search for them.

Winnie came to the door and giggled.

“You’re not even close!” he smirked.

“Well, I need them… now!” I said hotly.

He walked out the den.

“Hey, come back here!” I called.

Winnie came back with my pants,

“I’m a great hider,” he said proudly,

I had to agree with the little guy. To this day, I don’t know where he hid them. I put them on and realized that they fit much more snugly. The doubler filled out my crotch area completely. I hoped that nobody would notice.

Elaine and I went to our bus stops. Mom told Willie and Winnie that she was driving them herself. She wanted to drop off their diaper supplies and talk to the nurse. The last I saw of Willie, he was getting into the car with a super-scared look on his face. I got to school feeling pretty confident until my friend Peter asked me why I was wearing two diapers.

“You can tell?” I asked nervously.

“Only because I know you have a cold and must be wearing diapers. Why so thick?” he answered.

I gave him a brief account of what happened with my brothers and me, and how my mom had bought us all diaper doublers. He seemed more amused than sympathetic.

“This is serious,” I pointed out. “My mom is making us wear diapers permanently.”

“Do you really think she will?” he asked with concern.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Especially since Willie has been giving her such problems.”

“Sorry,” he said earnestly.

Since this was Thursday, the last period of the day was PE. I handed my note to Mr. Relling just before he went into the locker room. He read it and told me to wait for him. I wondered what he would assign me to do while the other guys were outside. He came back about five minutes later.

“OK, you can come in now,” he said.

I walked into the locker room and noticed that everybody was staring at me. I suddenly felt uncomfortable.

“Wade, I told everybody about your condition and the… special underwear you need. Why don’t you change now and meet us outside?”

I felt the room spinning around me. I must have looked terrible because Mr. Relling told Peter that he could stay with me in the locker room.

“What did Mr. Relling tell the class?” I croaked.

“Everything… sort of,” Peter answered. “He told us that you are going to be wearing diapers on a permanent basis and that if anyone teases you or makes fun or you, they will have to answer to him.”

“He used the word diapers?” I asked, plopping myself onto one of the benches.

“And plastic pants, too,” Peter added.

I thought I was going to die. My heart felt like it wanted to explode and I was too dizzy to stand up. Peter didn’t say anything. He just sat down next to me. I felt like such a baby when I started to cry.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Die,” I sniffled.

Peter didn’t answer. He opened my gym locker (we knew each other’s combinations) and took out my gym shorts and shirt. I mechanically took off my shirt and unbuckled my pants. I was in such a daze that it never occurred to me that this was the first time that Peter saw me in just a diaper and plastic pants. (Whenever we had sleepovers, I always put my diaper on in the bathroom and came out already wearing pajamas.) I pulled on the shorts and almost started crying again when I saw how much they bulged out.

“Let’s trade shorts,” Peter said.

It was a generous offer. Peter was slightly taller and heavier than me and his shorts would have helped hide my diaper.

“That’s OK,” I sniffled. “I’m alright with these.”

I put my shirt on and headed for the field.

“Wait,” Peter said, “I think you should splash some water on your face before you go outside.”

Mr. Relling had us play basketball. He divided us into four teams. Luckily, I was a ‘shirts’ team and not a ‘skins’ team. I think I would have run back into the locker room and refused to play if I had been forced to show off the top of my diaper and plastic pants. Nobody treated me really awful on the court but they didn’t come near me or talk to me either. I figured that I had just lost about every friend that I ever had. Back in the locker room, nobody looked at me when I changed back into my regular clothes. I got on my bus just before it took off (because I had to retrieve my diaper bag) and sat down. The kids that were sitting near me moved to other seats, farther away. By the time I got home, I was really depressed.

No one else was home so I went upstairs to change myself, wondering if I should or not. Dad had said that we could ‘change each other’ if Elaine, mom, or he weren’t home. Did this really mean that I had to wait for Willie and Winnie? I doubted that my younger brothers knew how to change a diaper so I changed myself. They showed up just as I was finishing. Willie must have had a very bad day.

“Just shut your stupid mouth,” he said to Winnie. “Leave me alone!” he added emphatically.

Willie slammed the door to their room and locked it.

“Hey, let me in,” Winnie protested. “This is my room, too, you know.”

“Maybe you should leave him alone for a little while,” I suggested. “You know how he is… give him a little time and he’ll come out on his own.”

Winnie shrugged and turned to go back downstairs. I remembered what my dad said about washing our diapers and plastic pants each day before he and mom got home.

“Do you need a change?” I asked.

“Nah,” Winnie answered. “I got changed just before leaving school.”

“Who helped you?” I asked.

“Mrs. Kellen, the nurse, of course… who else?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“Is that why Willie is so grouchy?” I wondered.

“Yeah, and the other stuff that happened.”

“What other stuff?”

We were still standing in the hall outside of Willie and Winnie’s room.

“None of your business,” Willie shouted through the door.

“OK, OK,” I answered.

I grabbed my diaper bag along with the diaper and plastic pants I just took off, and asked Winnie where his and Willie’s bag was. He said that he had left it in the laundry room.

“Are you going to put your pants back on?” Winnie asked.

I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t know why I hadn’t put them back on. Before I could answer, Winnie has stripped down to his diaper, too.

“It’s better this way,” he giggled.

I loaded the washer with our diapers (a total of ten with an equal number of doublers, which seemed like a lot to me). Winnie headed to the sinks to wash the plastic pants. Now that Willie was out of earshot I asked him what had happened.

“You know that Mom took us to school this morning and made us go with her to the nurse’s office, right? Mom told Mrs. Kellen that we would be wearing diapers now and that she wanted to know if we could use her office to change.”

“Mom is going to let you change your own diapers in school? Do you know how to do it by yourselves?”

Winnie gave me a funny look, like I was an idiot or something.

“Willie and me have been playing with your diapers since I was in first grade. Yeah, … we can put them on by ourselves.”

I did feel like an idiot. I never imagined that they had been at it for over three years.

“Anyway,” he continued, “Mrs. Kellen said that it would be alright but that she felt obligated to check us before we put our pants back on. I could tell that Willie really hated that idea but that he was afraid to complain about it in front of mom. After she left, we went out into the schoolyard. As soon as we got there, Terrell and his friends came up to us and asked if we were wearing our diapers and baby pants. Terrell and Willie pushed each other back and forth and were just about ready to fight when Mrs. Morgan broke it up. She sent both of them to Mr. Hallin’s office. They wouldn’t tell him what the fight was about, so he took away their recess and said that they wouldn’t get another one until they shook hands. They wouldn’t do it so they spent morning recess and lunch in his office. Willie was supposed to check in with Mrs. Kellen and when he didn’t, she went looking for him. She found out where he was and she told Mr. Hallin about his diapers. Mr. Hallin got mad at Terrell and called his mom. Now, Terrell is mad at Willie and Willie is mad that everybody knows about his diapers. I think there’s going to be a big fight some day.”

“Mom and dad’ll kill him if there is,” I noted.

“He’s so mad I don’t think he cares. He just wants to punch somebody.”

During his story I had been helping him hand wash and rinse the plastic pants. We were hanging them up on the drying rack when Willie walked in. I thought it interesting that he wasn’t wearing his pants.

“Hi,” Winnie and I said.

“Hi,” he answered back. “Um…” he said hesitantly, “… could you change me now?”

“Yeah, sure,” I answered.

We went upstairs to my room. Winnie got out the changing pad while Willie went to get a dry diaper and clean plastic pants. Willie was very docile during the change. He allowed Winnie and me to do all the work, including unpinning his wet diaper and pulling his plastic pants over the fresh one. When we were done his mood was completely different. He asked Winnie and me if we wanted to play with his racecars. He only complained a little bit when I pointed out that we had better get our homework done before mom and dad got home.

*****

The next few days were rough for me and ever rougher for Willie. The kids at my school didn’t actually make fun of me but they acted very differently toward me. Their eyes always seemed to be focused on my puffy pants and, when the classroom was quiet, they turned their heads every time my plastic pants crinkled. My friend, Peter, accidentally made things worse when he tried to defend me and wound up revealing that I was a lifelong bed wetter. None of this, though, could compare to what Willie went through.

Terrell and his friends were merciless. They took every opportunity to taunt and humiliate him, going so far as to gang up on him and lift his shirt so that others could see the top of his diaper and plastic pants (which they referred to as his baby pants). All of this was done outside of the teachers’ hearing and Willie was too proud to report it to them.

The big crisis erupted on Friday of the second week. He was on his way from the nurse’s office to the playground when Terrell and his gang jumped him near the boys’ restroom. At first, he didn’t understand what was going on. He tried to push them away but there were too many of them. Only after he was pushed to the floor did he understand that they were stealing his pants! He began kicking his assailants but this action actually made it easier for them. They were gone in a flash. His initial rage turned to fear as he put back on his shoes, which had been pulled off with his pants. He was sitting on the floor in plain view of anyone who might happen by. All the kids were outside playing and he wondered if he could get to the principal’s office without being seen. (Seeking out an adult was a big admission of defeat, which depressed him tremendously.) He peered up and down the hallway and made a dash for it. He was about to turn the first corner when he heard voices. He couldn’t tell where they came from. He stopped and listened. He was sure that one of them was Terrell’s. He took a peek and saw Terrell shoving his pants into his locker. He decided to have it out with him then and there.

“Give me back my pants!” he shouted.

Terrell slammed the locker shut. The other boys smirked as Willie approached. Without his pants to muffle the sound, his plastic pants crinkled and echoed loudly in the hallway.

“You’d better keep your voice down. You know we’re not supposed to be in here at lunchtime,” Terrell answered mockingly.

“Give me back my pants,” Willie repeated through clenched teeth.

“How many pants do you need?” Terrell snarled. “You’ve still got your baby pants.”

The other boys thought this was quite funny. Willie had walked up to Terrell and was standing directly in front of him. Terrell didn’t flinch. He maintained a look of mocking superiority. Willie shoved him backward against the lockers. The other boys began to react but Terrell waved them off. He shoved Willie back. They jumped at each other and effectively prevented each other from throwing punches. Willie was so angry that he decided to fight dirty. He relaxed his grip on Terrell who backed away slightly. This gave Willie the room he needed. He gave Terrell a quick and sharp knee thrust into the groin sending him to the floor moaning. This prompted the other boys to get involved. They jumped Willie. The boys threw a few punches before they suddenly stopped. Instead, they started tugging at his shirt. They were ripping it off him! Once again, there were too many for him to fight off. In a matter of seconds his shirt was in tatters on the floor.

“Only babies fight dirty,” one of the boys said, as if ganging up six-against-one wasn’t also dirty fighting.

They helped Terrell get to his feet and quickly ducked out the back door (to sneak around to the playground without being seen). Willie felt some degree of satisfaction in that he had made Terrell cry. But, he was crying, too. He picked up a couple of pieces of his shirt and wiped his eyes. There was an eerie silence. Lunch must be over! Kids were lining up outside and would be invading these halls in just a few moments. He wasted valuable time picking up the remnants of his shirt and throwing them away. (It was humiliating to think that someone might see them scattered on the floor.) Panic set in as he heard kids filing into the building. He wasted more time trying to figure out which way to go. If he ran towards the principal’s office, he would surely be seen. The only other alternative was to exit the building via the door Terrell and his friends had used. Then what? He would be outside… with no place to go… in just a diaper and plastic pants. More seconds went by. The voices grew louder. He finally found the courage to move. He started running in the direction of Mr. Hallin’s office. He reached the first turn and ran directly into the children going back to their classrooms. A howl went up as soon as he was spotted.

“Look, Willie’s only wearing a diaper!”

“What happened, Willie? Did you wet your pants?”

Lots of other things were shouted but they were lost in the general mayhem. He just kept running as fast as he could. Unfortunately, he was a fish swimming upstream. He had to run through most of the kids in order to reach Mr. Hallin’s office. By now, teachers had also realized what was going on and they had quite a lot of difficulty getting their students into the classrooms.

Mr. Hallin left his office when he heard the commotion. He wasn’t surprised that Willie was the cause but he was stunned to see how he was dressed.

“You’d better come into the office.”

Willie was crying and shaking uncontrollably. He had also flooded his diaper, which was now sagging low in his plastic pants. Mr. Hallin sat him down in one of the visitor’s chairs. Willie eventually calmed down. However, as he calmed down, his defiance grew. He had no intention of telling Mr. Hallin anything. He would get even on his own terms.

“So, who did this to you?”

“I don’t know,” Willie sniffled. “Nobody.”

“Nobody?” Mr. Hallin responded with surprise. “What do you mean nobody? Did you just decide to take your clothes off and run around the hallways in your…”

Mr. Hallin almost said underwear but he decided that Willie probably wouldn’t respond to the gentle treatment.

“…diapers?”

Willie looked at Mr. Hallin as if he had just slapped him across the face.

“No!” he protested loudly.

“Then who did it?” Mr. Hallin insisted.

“I don’t know… some kids.”

“Willie, you’re in sixth grade, the highest grade in this school. You’ve been here since kindergarten. I can’t imagine that you don’t know everybody, at least by sight.”

“No!” he protested again. “It was six or seven kids. Maybe they don’t go to school here.”

“Willie!” Mr. Hallin said shaking his head. “There are only 244 students in this school. Do you really think that six or seven kids could come onto campus without one of the teachers noticing?”

He was going to say yes but he thought better of it.

“I don’t know.”

Willie was beginning to squirm, partly because he was feeling uncomfortable under Mr. Hallin’s close questioning and partly because he had wet his diaper again. He needed a change very soon. Mr. Hallin had already noticed the soaked condition of Willie’s diaper.

“OK, we’ll continue this after you get your diaper changed.”

He grabbed Willie’s hand and led him to the nurse’s station. Thankfully, all the teachers had closed their doors and the hallways were deserted. Mr. Hallin turned Willie over to Mrs. Kellen and left instructions for her to escort him back to the main office. Mrs. Kellen already knew about the disruption and the state that Willie had been left in. She led him to the adjoining infirmary and had him stand by an empty bed. She returned with a bed pad, a fresh diaper, doubler, and plastic pants. She laid him on the bed and removed his plastic pants. His resistance to authority collapsed and he meekly allowed her to remove his sopping diaper. She spoke to him gently as she washed his diaper area and laid a dry diaper and soaker under him. He almost smiled when she powdered him and pinned him into the new diaper. He was completely relaxed by the time she pulled up his plastic pants.

“Feel better?” she asked in a kindly voice.

“Yes, thank you,” he admitted.

“Good. Now you’re not going to give Mr. Hallin trouble like you did the other day, are you?”

“But I can take care of this myself!” he argued.

“Really? Then how come you lost your shirt and pants?”

“It wasn’t fair,” he explained. “I couldn’t fight six of them all at once.”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “Six against one isn’t ever fair. Now, be a good boy and tell Mr. Hallin what he needs to know. He wants to help you.”

She could tell that Willie remained unconvinced but she didn’t want to push him any further. All she had intended to do was plant the idea in his mind. She led him back to Mr. Hallin’s office. This time, a third grader with a hall pass for the bathroom giggled at him.

“Come in, Willie. Take a seat. Are you ready to tell me what happened?” Mr. Hallin asked in a direct, no-nonsense fashion.

Willie was back into a defiant mode.

“I don’t know anything else,” he answered.

“Alright. Then let me get this straight. Some boys… you don’t know who… took away your shirt and pants. Maybe they go to this school and maybe they don’t. Would you say that they were fifth or sixth graders?”

“I guess so.”

“Good. Let’s get started, then.”

“Started?” Willie asked warily.

“Yes. We have to eliminate all possibilities. We’ll start with the fifth grade rooms. We’ll go room by room until we find them or until we’re sure that they’re not students in this school.”

“I’m pretty sure that they weren’t from this school,” Willie said in an attempt to buy time.

“Well, we still have to be sure. You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure they weren’t fifth or sixth graders. Maybe they were big fourth graders. We’ll start there instead.”

In fact, Mr. Hallin had no intention of dragging Willie around the school in just his diaper and plastic pants. He had already called our mom who was on her way. But, he did want to get to the bottom of this and he hoped that Willie would cave in under the threat. He was certain that Terrell and his friends were the culprits. He hoped that suggesting that they visit Winnie’s classroom first would bring Willie up short.

“OK,” Willie agreed.

“OK, what?” Mr. Hallin asked, happy that his plan had worked.

“I guess we should start in the fourth grade.”

Mr. Hallin was at a loss. Did Willie really not care that a whole classroom of kids was very likely going to laugh at him in his diaper and plastic pants? So be it, Mr. Hallin thought. Once again, he took Willie by the hand (only more firmly this time) and led him out of the office. The closer they got, the more Willie tried to slow down.

“No dawdling,” Mr. Hallin said, “We’ve got a lot of classrooms to look through.”

Willie dug in his heels and wouldn’t move.

“Do you have something to tell me?” Mr. Hallin asked.

“Couldn’t I just peek in the room, through the glass in the door?”

“No,” Mr. Hallin answered firmly, “if you’re going to accuse someone of doing something as serious as this, you have to look them over carefully to make sure that there’s no mistake.”

They continued on. Mr. Hallin could feel that Willie was deliberately slowing down again. He was on the verge of saying something when Willie stopped again.

“Will I be in trouble if I tell you who it was?”

“No, Willie. I just wish that you would trust me a little more than you do.”

*****

“So, what did mom say when Mr. Hallin told her?” I asked after Willie had told me the whole story.

“She said that she hoped that the other guys would be punished. He said that he had already started the process of seeing to it that Terrell gets suspended for a week and that the other guys get at least one day.”

“At least that will give you a little time to get the other kids on your side,” I said.

“I guess so,” Willie answered without enthusiasm.

“You know,” I continued, “there’s something I don’t get.”

“What?” Willie asked.

“Well, your friends are giving you a really hard time and Winnie’s friends don’t seem to care. How come?”

“Go ahead, tell him,” Willie said.

Winnie looked sheepish.

“Well, you see, it’s kind of like this. My friends have always known that I wear diapers.”

“Huh? What does that mean?” I asked.

“Remember I told you that I’ve been wearing your old diapers since first grade? Well, sometimes I would wear them to school like you do. You know, whenever I was sick and stuff like that.”

“Your friends think you need to wear diapers?”

“Yeah,” he said simply.

“Go ahead,” Willie coaxed, “tell him the rest.”

“Do I have to?” Winnie begged.

“Tell him, or I will,” Willie threatened.

“OK,” Winnie agreed. “But you have to promise not to get mad, Wade.”

“What did you do?” I asked suspiciously, dreading his answer.

“I told them that I wasn’t the only one in our family who had a problem with bed wetting.”

“You told your friends about my bed wetting?” I screeched.

“And your pants wetting, too,” Willie added.

“Oh, man!” I said in an irritated tone. “How many people did you tell?”

“That doesn’t really matter. Telling one person is just as bad as telling a dozen,” my mom said from the doorway. “You knew better than to tell anyone outside the family about Wade’s problem. We’ll discuss this later.”

Winnie groaned.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a seemingly sincere tone.

I really don’t know why I didn’t throw a fit over this revelation. Maybe it was because I was beginning to enjoy hanging around with my brothers in our diapers and plastic pants. (I had bowed to their pressure and didn’t wear anything over my diaper and plastic pants whenever I was home.) Later that night, he was informed of his punishment—one more month of being grounded. I thought that he was getting off pretty easy. He never went out much anyway and he loved sitting around the house in his diapers and plastic pants. Having to go to bed a half-hour earlier than usual was a pain, though.