Somewhere around the middle of the school year when everything is kind of moving at a crawl, each school day is torture unto itself. I had my next and arguably best close encounter. It is one that led to a friendship that still exists today.

I got held back in reading by my teacher because she wanted to talk to me about my lack of effort recently. By the time I got to the boys locker room to change into my gym shorts, most everyone was already dressed and up in the gym. I say most everyone because, there was still one boy in the locker room when I got there. He was sitting in his regular clothes, just sitting on the bench that stretched between the two rows of lockers. He was staring at the floor. It was obvious that he had been crying.

At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about diapers or anything, I was just thinking about getting changed and getting upstairs to the gym as fast as possible, but when I saw that he was still crying, I had to see if he was ok.

I walked over to him and asked, “Uh, are you alright?”

He just sniffled and said, “Leave me alone!”

I thought for a second about going back up to the gym and getting our gym teacher but then I decided not to. I just went over and started to change. He was maybe five feet away and still crying while I stripped to my underwear and socks. I opened my gym locker, stuffed my clothes in and pulled out my gym shorts, which were starting to get a bit ripe. I made a mental note to remember to take them home today and let mom wash them. I kept glancing at the kid while I pulled on my shorts and sat down on the bench to put my gym shoes on. He was still crying but he was trying not to let me see his face.

That was all I could take. I couldn’t go up to the gym and leave him down here crying, so I turned to him and said, “Listen, I know you probably don’t want my help, but I can’t just leave you here like this. Please tell me, what’s wrong?”

“What do you care?” he barked, stood up and made like he was going to leave. Then he stopped and starting crying again with his back to me.

I pushed my foot into my second shoe and started to stand up as I looked back over at him. I realized for the first time what it was that he was crying about. The place where he had been sitting was wet and a quick glance at his backside showed where the wet spot came from.

Without thinking, I said, “Did you pee your pants?”

The words were out before I knew it. I wanted so badly to grab them from the air and shove them back down my own throat, but it was too late.

He turned to me and with a surprising amount of anger, he screeched, “And I suppose you want to laugh at me too? Maybe call me names? Go ahead! Call me ‘baby’ or ‘diaper boy’. Go ahead, there’s no teachers here to get you into trouble!”

He was both crying and viably angry.

I was still not completely standing and I let myself sit back down on the bench. I let out a heavy sigh before I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like it sounded.”

I sighed again, “Were the guys giving you a hard time earlier?”

“No way, they were patting me on the back and congratulating me for pissing myself! What the #$@% do you think?” He was still exploding with anger.

“I’m Max, Max Riddle, and if you want, you can wear my school pants out of here.”

That took the wind right out of his sails and I could see the anger flush right out of him, but he just stood there in silence.

“Listen, take off your wet clothes and go shower real fast. Then you can put on my clothes and get the heck out of here before the guys come back.” I said.

“What?” is all he could say, and it came out broken and high pitched.

“Listen, if you stay down here much longer, the guys will just come back down and bully you some more. I am offering you a way out!” I stood back up and faced him.

“But what will you wear?” he asked.

“I’m going to take your clothes and rinse them out in the sink. Then I’ll wear them out of here. No one will think to look at me and I should be able to get past everyone un-noticed. Hopefully, they’ll dry during Social Studies class.” I laid out my plan for him, but also for myself since I was winging all of this.

“You’re crazy! You’re going to put on my pants that I peed in?” He was really reeling from my offer.

I started pulling my shoes and shorts back off again and answered, “Yes! Now strip!”

This time, I stripped all the way to my birthday suite except for my socks, “By the way, what’s your name?” I asked.

He finally started stripping, slowly at first but then faster, “Mark!” he said rather excitedly.

I looked up at the clock on the wall. “They’ll be coming down here in about 15 minutes, so you best go run to the shower fast while I go rinse your pants.”