When Howard woke again, he was sopping wet. The waterproof mat he had be sleeping on had allowed his pee to pool around his tummy, soaking his T-shirt. He was again taken to the dressing area where his T-shirt and training pants were stripped from his unresisting body. His T-shirt was added to the plastic bag of sodden clothes and he was redressed in his training pants only. Then he was taken back to his building blocks to play until it was time for lunch. At lunch he discovered that the peanut butter stuck to his mouth like glue. He had to drink four cups of milk to keep himself from gagging on the tenacious substance that adhered to his upper palette. He was crouched on his hands and knees looking into the interior structure of his building when his bladder gave way again. This time he felt the warm stream as it bounced back within the confines of his panties and started soaking through. Howard struggled to sit up to get one of the attendants to take him to the potty, but it was too late; a puddle had formed beneath him before he could sit up. One of the attendants who had been tasked to watch the new toddler with a weak bladder spotted the mess before he could utter a word. He was again taken back to the dressing area where after some discussion with the other attendants about his lack of clean training pants, it was decided to diaper him. Howard was enraged by the very idea of being diapered. He fought them tooth and nail and was only subdued when three of the attendants held him down and forcibly diapered him. Once the deed was done, all the fight seemed to go out of him. He lay passively on the table, uncaring about what they would do to him next. As punishment for his combativeness, it was decided that he should take an extended time-out in one of the unoccupied playpens under the watchful eye of a nursery attendant. When the supervisor heard the report of his unruly behavior from the worker assigned to look after Howard, she immediately called Anita.

Howard sat in the playpen staring out at the wall of the nursery, listening to the sound of infants alternately cooing and fussing about their environment. From time to time a large busted mother would come in and take her baby from a crib or playpen and carry it through a door marked with the colored cutout of a baby bottle. The mother and child would emerge fifteen to twenty minutes later with satisfied expressions on both of their faces. Howard wonder idly what the mothers were doing in the room with their babies; the mothers positively glowed as they walked back into the nursery and handed their sleepy infants to the attendants. Howard finally passed it off as a woman’s mystery that would be eternally beyond his understanding and forgot about it.

Howard stared off in the distance wondering how he had come to his fate. His pacifier and stuffed toy lay unnoticed at his side. From time to time when the attendant wasn’t looking directly at him, he would pluck at the plastic on the front of his disposable diaper in frustration. After a while he grew bored and fell asleep in the playpen. He was awoken for his afternoon snack by the nursery attendant. He stood at the side of the playpen as she handed him his oatmeal cookie. The attendant watched until he ate every last crumb. The cookie was dry and a little salty, making him horribly thirsty. Anita had coached him carefully about the proper word to use for milk. Howard hung on to the rail of the playpen with both hands and gazed up at the attendant, saying innocently, “Chi-chi!”

This time, instead of getting whole milk in a wax cup, he was given a baby bottle full of chocolate milk. Howard would have thrown it away if he hadn’t been so thirsty. He stood at the railing and wept as he put the nipple in his mouth and began to suck. The cold chocolate milk was refreshing and he closed his eyes as he tried to pull in as much milk as he could into his mouth. He barely felt it when his bowels opened and voided the residue from the day’s meals into his diaper. The fruit and vegetable meals he had eaten Sunday and Monday had made his stools so soft that it would have taken a tremendous amount of control to retain them. Unfortunately for Howard, the muscle tone of his sphincters had deteriorated to the point where conscious control was barely possible even if he hadn’t been concentrating on the bottle. The soft mess slipped out of his behind and filled his diaper without causing him the slightest discomfort. As far as Howard was concerned, he had merely passed a baby fart.

Howard was so intent on getting more milk that he wasn’t aware that Anita had silently walked into the room and was watching him while he nursed and pooped. A slow smile grew on her face as the smell of a dirty diaper hit her. Anita had called earlier to see how he was doing and was told about his accidents. When the supervisor had called and told her what had happened when they attempted to diaper him, she wasn’t surprised at his reaction. She had told them she agreed with their decision to put him in a playpen for an extended timeout and suggested they leave him in the playpen for the balance of the afternoon. She had told them that his regressive behavior must have meant that he wanted to be treated like a baby and that it would probably make him feel more secure if they put him in the nursery with the other babies. Anita suggested that they give him his milk in a baby bottle to reinforce his sense of security. The supervisor agreed immediately to Anita’s suggestions for the handling of the little hellion. She wanted Howard’s disruptive influence on the other children to be removed as soon as possible. Anita’s rationalization for treating him like an infant meshed perfectly with the supervisor’s understanding of child psychology. Once Howard was reduced to helpless dependence, he would become more tractable.