Howard nodded dumbly, his profound embarrassment with his childish act had stilled his tongue and rendered him incapable of speech. Anita efficiently stripped his wet overalls and undies from his diminutive body, set the stopper on the tub and twisted the taps on the tub to begin filling it with warm water. The pounding of the water beating against the bottom of the tub filled his ears as he stood nakedly in the tub dressed solely in his T-shirt. He looked on helplessly while Anita finished mopping up his mess with the towel. When she was done, she took his pants and the towel to the utility room for washing. The water was up to his shins when she returned and pulled his T-shirt over his head. Then she ordered him to sit in the tub and turned off the taps. Howard complied passively, not wanting to start an argument after having made such an utter fool of himself. He was thankful that Anita hadn’t commented on his accident. She could have made a fuss and told him what a child he was. Instead she cleaned up his mess without a hint of approbation. “Stay there and soak for awhile, Honey. Don’t worry if you have another ‘accident’ while you’re in the tub. I’m going to rinse it out after you have your bath anyway, okay?”, she said kindly.

Howard blushed a deep crimson at the mention of his accident and nodded quietly in agreement. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t about to have another accident, but the words wouldn’t come out. Besides, he couldn’t be sure that his bladder wouldn’t cut loose again unexpectedly. It was best if he remained there as she suggested and let the clean water wash away all traces of his sin. After half an hour, she returned and ordered him to stand up in the tub. She took a bar of Ivory soap and lathered him quickly, then took a washcloth and began to bathe him. When he tried to take the washcloth from her hand to bathe himself, she playfully slapped his hand away and continued her ministrations. After he was completely scrubbed, she dipped the cloth in the water and rinsed it out before wiping the remnants of the suds from his body. In a few minutes he was free of soap and she opened the stopper on the tub. Anita wrung out the cloth and hung it over the shower curtain rod to dry, then lifted him out of the tub as if he was a little boy. She grabbed a terrycloth towel from the towel bar and knelt down beside him. Then she began to vigorously buff him dry with the fluffy fabric. When she was done, she said not a word as she stood up, bent over and picked him up in her arms and carried him to the bedroom. Howard was humiliated. Never, never in his adult life had anyone treated him like a child. He felt helpless in her arms. His nakedness next to her fully clothed body only served to empathize how defenseless he had become. She had one arm wrapped around his back while her other hand supported his four year old bottom easily in her palm. When they reached the bedroom, she sat him on the bed and got a pair of clean underwear from the drawer. She made him lie back on the bed while she slipped his feet through the leg holes and pulled them down to his knees. Then she took his hands in hers and pulled him to a sitting position before helping him off the bed. Howard reached down to tug the underwear up his thighs, but she slapped his hands away so she could dress him herself. When she pulled them over his bottom, he was surprised at how soft and comfortable his underwear felt. They were tighter than he would have liked, but the feel of the plushy fabric against his skin made him feel like they were caressing his bottom. When he looked down at the front of his briefs, he saw to his dismay that they had no fly for urinating. “What kind of boy’s briefs are these?”, he thought to himself in confusion.

He fingered the soft cloth with his hand and discovered that they were thickly padded through the crotch with what felt like resilient foam padding and tight elastic at the leg openings. All at once, his small size, the lack of a fly on the brief, the foam padding and the elasticized legs concatenated themselves into a realization of what the briefs must be and he thought in shock, “Training pants! Anita’s put me in toddler’s training pants!” His embarrassment at wetting himself was forgotten as he thought to himself furiously, “What the Hell does she think she’s doing? She has no business making decisions like that without my approval. I wear the pants in this family, not her!”