School started back up in the fall and it was great to see all my old friends that lived to far away to see each other during the summer. As for the close encounters, I had not seen any diapered boys since I returned home from camp and it wasn’t for lack of looking on my part either. The only way I kept myself from missing Buz so much was to slip down the baby isles at the stores just to ogle the packages and check out the different kinds of diapers like Pampers, Huggies, Pull-Ups and GoodNites. I never really knew just how many different kinds there were for all different aged kids.
Finally, one day, when mom and me were at the drug store, I saw this boy that looked like he was about my age. He came walking in with his mom and he didn’t look happy at all. Normally, I would have not thought anything about his bad mood, but something about the boy had caught my eye and I decided I needed to follow him. I asked my mom if I could go look at the toys. The drug store had an isle of cheap trash toys, you know the kind that break after two days, but they were still fun to look at. Except this time, I had no intention of going to the toys isle. Mom said yes and I was off in a flash. It was hard to follow the boy and not look like I was following him.
He was walking behind his mom as she went down each isle, picking up different items as she went. He was looking at the floor and shuffling his feet, looking so pitiful. If Bruce, the school bully had seen him, he probably would have said something like, “Somebody call a Waaaabulance!” or something as equally thoughtless and insensitive.
When he and his mom turned down the diaper isle, he suddenly got a look of fear and total embarrassment on his face. He turned white as a sheet and froze to the spot. His mother turned around, gave him a look and said, “Get your little butt over here right now or I swear to God that I will pull your pants down right here in this store and spank your bare butt for everyone to see.”
If it was possible, the boy looked even more freighted and he slowly walked over to his mother. When he was within reaching distance, she snatched his arm and gave him two strong swats on his bottom. From the sound of it, he wasn’t wearing a diaper just then because I could hear the smacking sound of her hand against his fleshy bottom. It was all that he could take and the tears started to roll.
His mother let go of his arm and said, “Go ahead and cry. Since you wet your bed like a baby, you might as well act like one too.”
And with that, she took a big package of pampers off the shelf and pushed them into his arms. “You can carry these all the way home.” She sneered. I felt so bad for the boy and I felt equally as much hatred for his mother for the way she was humiliating him in public. That whole time, I had been standing just at the end of the isle where I could see everything, but to them, it looked like I was looking at the items on the end shelf, which were some sort of foot soaking tubs with motors on them. The boy and his mother went to the checkout and I went and found my mom. She was picking up her prescriptions and was just about ready to go too.
I learned a lot from watching that boy and his mother. I learned that, no one should be made to feel bad about wearing diapers or for wetting their pants.
Less than a month later, I saw that same boy again, but this time, it was at the park. I wanted to go say something to him, but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to embarrass him more so I just watched him playing Frisbee with an older kid who was probably his brother and then I left and went home. That wouldn’t be the last I would see of him.