I didn’t go to school Wednesday or Thursday for two reasons. The first, which is the obvious reason, I wasn’t feeling quite strong enough and the second reason was all that snow. Wednesday I felt like crap pretty much all day long and that night we got hit with a big snow storm that closed the schools and pretty much everywhere else that day.
Grandmother had told me the blizzard had laid down twenty-two inches of snow. Now I’ve never lived anywhere where it snowed very much at all, but still, I was absolutely amazed to find out that all the roads had been cleared by noon on Thursday. Apparently, for the first time in several years, the schools were closed for more than one day. They had closed early Tuesday, and stayed closed Wednesday and Thursday.
Though I doubted there would be any customers, Mom and John left for work as soon as they had their lunch. I was left in the care of my grandparents which wasn’t such a horrible thing after all. For the most part they left me alone, only checking on me occasionally.
Sometime around three in the afternoon of that Thursday; after successfully pooping in the toilet and not inside a diaper, I was feeling well enough (which is to say I was bored out of my skull) to make my way out of my room and go exploring the house. Yeah, I know it was risky, I mean if Grandfather caught me again… but I was hoping to find a computer so that I could check out that website. You remember the one that girl gave me at the rest stop?
Sure enough, I found a computer in a large room directly across from my grandfathers’ study. In that room there was a large wooden desk exactly the kind you would expect people of money to have. There was also a large comfortable looking chair behind the desk, a floral patterned sofa with matching chairs and lots and lots of plants. I remember wondering how all those plants could survive in such a dark room. Yeah, there were windows, but they were all covered with heavy curtains that matched the sofa and chairs.
“Just my luck!” I said as I positioned myself behind the computer.
The computer was already on, but I didn’t recognize the operating system. It wasn’t Microsoft Windows and it wasn’t easy to figure out how to get onto the internet. I found something called Firefox and when I clicked on it, it opened up to something I did recognize, Yahoo.com.
“Sweet!” I said to myself as I began to type in the address to the site.
Have you ever tried to work a mouse or type with one hand wrapped with an Ace Bandage? Well, if you haven’t, let me tell you that it isn’t easy to do.
“What was it again?” I thought aloud, “w-w-w-.-i-l-d-.-c-o-m” I spelled it out verbally as I typed each letter.
The website was slow to load at first, but when it came up there was no mistaking the intent of the site. There, in large colorful childlike wooden blocks, was spelled out ‘I LIKE DIAPERS’. And below that were pictures of people my age wearing diapers. I scrolled down and saw that there were hundreds, if not thousands of photos.
“What the heck?” I said aloud, forgetting that I didn’t have permission to be in that room, let alone to be using the computer.
I scrolled back to the top and saw that below the block letters was a menu. It went…
Diaper Stories – Find a Diapered Friend – Chat Room – Diaper Boys Only – Diaper Girls Only – Parents Only – FAQ – Contacts
A sickening thought occurred to me. What if Grandfather had already looked up the website address himself before giving me the note? That thought disturbed me almost as much as the website itself.
Don’t ask me why I chose to click on [Find a Diapered Friend] but I did. A new page loaded with a single blank place. It was asking what country I was in. Lord knows why I filled in that blank. The next page to load asked me what state and for half a second I hesitated before putting in ‘Maine’. Another page asked for my city or zip-code and since I didn’t have a clue what the zip-code was for Lewiston, Maine, I entered the city. Yet another page loaded asking me to click on my own age range. I clicked on the 11-14 range. One more page opened asking for a search radius. I didn’t know what that meant so I clicked on the one that said ‘100 Miles’.
What I saw next surprised the heck out of me. “127 registered diapered friends found within 100 miles of you.”
I used the back button to change my answer and searched closer. Instead of doing 100 miles I did 5 miles. “5 registered diapered friends found within 5 miles of you.”
And directly below that was a button that read, “To view member profiles register now for free.”
I was completely in awe of the site and just as unaware of my present surroundings. If anyone were to walk in on me right then, I was sure to be busted.
Registering was easy. I only had to create a screen name and a profile. For a screen name I chose to use the nickname that John used to call me when I was little, TigerFish.
After registering I had to do the search over and this time it said that there were, “6 registered diapered friends found within 5 miles of you.” And directly below that was my screen name, TigerFish and below that were the other five member names, PampersBoy, Diapered4Life, BB-N2-TB-DL, Sissy4U, and finally Wet_Dwaggy.