STOP

DISASTER AREA AHEAD

(PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK)

I received the second shock for the day when he opened the door and said, “And this is my room!”

When I saw his room, I could hear my mother’s voice in my head as if she were standing right behind me. “Would you look at this mess? This is the worst looking pigsty I have ever seen! How someone could live in this filth is beyond me?”

“Whhhhooooaaaa!” I gasped.

As though it were not completely obvious, Sean turned and looked at me, “What?”

“Look at your room?” I exclaimed.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Your mom and dad don’t mind your room being this messy?”

“I like it like this,” He said climbing over his bed to the other side of the room.

“My mother would slaughter me if my room ever got this bad.” I commented and then the smell hit me. It was as through someone had taken the hose of a vacuum, held it against my face, flipped the switch to ON and sucked the air right out of me. The space reeked of stale urine. Exactly what you would expect from a bed-wetter. So, why was I caught off guard? I coughed, gagged and threw-up a little in the back of my throat. I had to turn away to catch my breath and I was back down the hallway before I could breathe again.

“Come in, I want to show you something.” Sean called out.

“He must not have seen me nearly blow chunks,” I thought to myself.

I turned and started back toward his room, but when I caught a second whiff of the ammonia laced air, I stopped moving and breathing.

There was a clatter from inside his room, “What did I do with that?” and something crashed, “Nope not there!”

Several things were going through my mind at the same time. Even though he is younger than me, I wanted so much to be friends with Sean and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I didn’t think I could go into his room without puking. I turned my back to his room, took a deep breath, held it and went into his bedroom.

The first thing I noticed was the large, yellow and brown pee stain on his sheet less mattress. The second thing I noticed was the pile of used GoodNites that nearly buried an odd looking green pail. With a closer look, I saw that on the outside of the pail, in raised letters were two words, Diaper Genie.

Sean was nowhere in sight but I could hear him, “Where is it?” his voice came from under the bed, “I know it’s here somewhere!” he continued mumbling as random objects would be flung from under the bed and land on a pile somewhere else in the room.

With a triumphant cry, he announced, “Ah-ha! Found the little bugger! Eeeew, it has spider boogers all over it!”

When something touched my foot, I leapt up and squealed, “Yikes! What was that?”

“It’s just me!” Sean laughed and I looked down to see his head and a single arm sticking out from under the bed.

“Man, you scared the crap out of me!” I shot back without thinking and expended what little oxygen my lungs still contained.

“Take my hand and pull me out!” Sean said.

I did the best I could to breath as little as possible while reaching down to try to extract him from under his bed.

“What happened to your shirt?” I asked when I saw that he was now naked from the waist up. Without his shirt, he looked even younger. His chest and arms were completely undeveloped and void of any outward signs of puberty. And then I saw it sticking out of the waistband of his pants, he was wearing a GoodNite! It was unmistakable and if there had been any untainted oxygen in the room I probably would have started hyperventilating on the spot.

“Got caught on something under there so I slipped out of it.” He said plopping down on his bed.

A stuffed bear had been resting on the other side of the mattress, but when Sean plopped down, the bear went sailing into the ammonia laced air and then disappeared into the pile of clothes and toys that littered the floor.

I was breathing very shallowly through my mouth, but was feeling like I needed to get out of there fast and get some fresh air. In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore and asked, “Mind if I open the window?”

“You hot?” he asked, “Then just take off your shirt.”

That put a kink into my feeble attempt to get some fresh air without hurting his feelings, but then I said, “I better not, my rash isn’t totally gone yet.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot!” he said while fumbling with some little mechanical device. “Sure, go ahead, but it might stink a bit, Lucky poops mountains out there.”

I nearly said something back but I decided I’d risk it and stepped over several scattered items to get to the window.

He was right, the air coming in the window didn’t smell like roses but it was a far cry better than the stench inside. With semi-fresh air spilling in, I was able to think clearly again.

“Whatcha got there?” I asked while making my way over to where he sat on the bed.

“It’s a robot I invented.” He answered and laid it on the edge of the nightstand. Then he pressed a blue button on top of it.

The robot sprang to life, BEEP, CLICK, BEEP, CLICK, BEEP, CLICK. “Ah man, I never can get it to walk right.” He groaned.

“What’s it supposed to do?” I asked stepping over a Tonka truck to get a closer look.

“That clicking sound is the gears skipping,” he said.

“Well it’s still pretty cool.” I said honestly.

“Yeah! Real cool, but thanks anyway. Oh well, I’ll figure it out one day.” Sean swept up the little robot and tossed it over his shoulder before adding, “Hey, want to play a board game? I have loads of them!” He sprang from the bed and leapt past me, nearly knocking me into the pile of used GoodNites.

He pulled open his closet door, which was a chore, given all the crap that was piled in front of it, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Sitting on a shelf, about four feet above the floor, were three unopened packages of GoodNites and one partially full package along with a large white tub with a blue lid and large blue lettering, ‘DIAPER BUTTER’.