Twenty-Eighth Encounter ~
After what happened with Mike at the party, an idea started brewing. I don’t think I slept much at all after the party. My mind wouldn’t shut-off. I kept thinking about helping Mike change out of his wet pants and SpongeBob underwear. I was also mulling over my new idea, so the follow day, when I ran into Mark, I shared it with him. He got excited and decided that it was an absolutely brilliant idea. He even helped me refine it from an obscure idea into something that was totally doable.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have had several close encounters with the diaper and wetting kind more than once now and I have found myself presented with an emergency wetting or pooping situation where I’ve had to think fast to help out whoever it was. My idea, originally, was to create some sort of Super Hero style utility diaper belt thing that I could wear at all times in case I found myself faced with another situation like what happened with Mike at the party or at the movies that one time.
As Mark and I talked it over, we both agreed that a diaper utility belt wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous when you conceder all the stuff that would need to be contained in it. Mark came up with a better idea to get one of those backpacks that has a secret compartment in it where you are supposed to keep your laptop computer.
That evening, while Mark and I were in my room, talking about what sort of things to put into the emergency backpack, my sister came into my room carrying a green zippered three-ringed binder.
“Hey thief.” She said.
She said this because my sister and I had a bit of a tiff earlier in the day because she caught me in her room taking notebook paper out of her desk drawer. Granted, I should have asked before taking it, but she didn’t need to blow it up like she had just caught me stealing the original Declaration of Independence.
She tossed the zippered binder at my head and she didn’t do it nicely either, but I did catch it before it collided with my skull.
“Hey! Watch it!” I snapped at her.
“You can have that and I put 500 sheets of college ruled notebook paper in it for you. So don’t let me catch you trying to rob paper from me again!” she said and then stormed out before I could say anything else.
“Whoa!” Mark said, “You’ve got a cool sister.”
I, on the other hand, was feeling rather confused. I was both angry that she’d just tried to brain me with a three-ring binder and shocked that she would do something so nice after having just caught me stealing paper from her.
“Uh, yeah.” I said, unzipping the binder and seeing all the paper.
“Boy, you are set for the rest of High School.” Mark commented.
But as I had the binder on my lap and realizing that it was my sister’s binder from last year, it struck me how awesome it would be to have an emergency diaper kit that would fit into something that could be disguised as a zippered three-ringed binder.
The fact that I was thinking so hard was evident, even to Mark who kicked my shin, not hard, only hard enough to get my attention.
“What?” he asked me, so I told him what I was just thinking about.
“Oh man, that would be so cool.” Mark said pulling it out of my hands, “And you could still keep it in the secret compartment of the backpack just so that someone doesn’t mistakenly try to look in it.”
“Too bad it has those three rings in it.” I said.
Mark popped open the rings, took out all the paper and handed it to me without even looking at me. He was too busy checking out the binder by flipping it this way and that.
“I think if we could get these two rivet things off, then the whole metal part should come out.” Mark said, holding it open and pointing to one of the rivets.
I took the notebook back so that I could get a closer look.
“Nah man, they are really in there.” I said, trying to pull the ring unit away from the zippered cover.
“Give it back a second.” Mark said, yanking it out of my hands. “Got a pocket knife or maybe even a flat screwdriver?”
“Um, I can get you both, which you want?” I asked him, already standing up and heading toward my bedroom door.
“Maybe both, and a hammer too, if you got one.” Mark said while continuing to examine the binder.
I chuckled as I left him sitting on the side of my bed while I went scavenging for tools. The screwdriver and hammer I found in the junk-drawer in the kitchen. The pocket knife I got from off my brother’s dresser. He wasn’t home. For the first time since his surgery, he’d gone out with some of his friends, and besides, I knew, unlike my sister, he wouldn’t mind that I was in his room.
It took Mark only two minutes to pop those two rivets and remove the whole three-ringed until from the cover.
“Oh man Mark, you are a wizard!” I said feeling around the inside of the spacious zippered cover.
“Ah, it was easy!” he said, which I knew wasn’t the truth because I’d just watched him do it and it had looked extremely difficult to do.
Right about then, Dad stepped into my room wearing his overcoat.
“Hi boys.” Dad said.
“Hey dad!” I said.
“Oh, hi Mr. Riddle.” Mark said.
Dad reached up to his hat, pulled off a partial handful of snow and threw it at Mark.
“Ah no that’s cold!” Mark said as he recoiled backward across my bed.
“Sorry to be the one to tell you Mark, but you’re going to have to stay here tonight. The roads are horrible out there. I saw five accidents on my way home.”
“I better call my mom then.” Mark said.
“No need, she just called here looking for you. I told her we’d let you sleep in the garage.” Dad said trying to throw snow at me but missing by a mile.
“Whoa, um, I got to sleep in the garage?” Mark said gullibly.
“Dude!” I said hitting him with the notebook cover as he sat back up, “Dad was kidding!” I then looked at dad, “Um, you were kidding right dad?”
Dad cocked one eyebrow as he said, “Oh, I suppose you can sleep inside.”
Mark was so funny! He sprang off my bed, fell to his knees and was hugging my dad’s leg while saying, “Oh thank you kind sir! And might I beg you for a morsel of food?”
Dad reached down, grabbed Mark by the hair and lifted my friend off him. Of course dad didn’t really pull Mark’s hair, the two of them just made it look that way.
“I suppose next you’ll want to wash yourself in MY tub!” dad said still holding Mark by the hair.
“You mean,” as he GULPED a breath, “a bath?” Mark asked, causing me to laugh out loud.
Dad let go of Mark’s hair and playfully wiped it on his overcoat, “perhaps two baths are in order.”
I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to wet myself.
“And you could probably use one yourself, son of mine!” Dad said while giving me a disgusted look.
Trying to stifle my giggles, I said, “Yes dear father! I shall go wash at once!”
Dad left, leaving Mark and me falling all over each other with laughter. After dinner, Mark took a shower and I took one after him. Then the two of us spent the rest of the evening, and much of the night, talking about stupid stuff that seemed important, only to us.
The following day, school was closed, so Mark and I started a snow shoveling business. During the night, more than five inches of snow had fallen, but Mark and I found that on the opposite side of the street from my house, the snow was more like a foot deep and sometimes even deeper in places. That first day, we raked in over forty-dollars and we almost doubled that on the second day because it snowed a little more that night. Mark hadn’t slept over that second night though; however we had already planned on getting up early to get a jump on shoveling.
Sean showed up around lunch time, but he didn’t want any part of snow shoveling. He was more concerned with throwing snowballs at us. Mark and I took a few minutes out of our busy work to pelt Sean with a few dozen snowballs. Actually, that was really fun right up to the point where Sean got in a lucky throw and nailed me in the face.
“Sean! When I catch you, you’re dead!” I shouted and took off running for him. Thankfully, the snow drift Sean had been using as a snow shield also slowed him down enough to allow me to catch up to him. When I was only a couple feet away from him, I leapt into the air and pounced on him like a snow leopard.
As I leapt onto him, he screeched like a barn owl. I sat on his back, shoved him face first into the snow and said, “Thought you would get away with ambushing us, huh?”
He struggled to get away and nearly folded himself in half backwards so that he could get his face out of the snow to breathe.
“Max, you’re crushing me!” He whined, but he should have saved his breath because I had him right where I wanted him. I dug my fingers into the sides of his thick wool coat and began tickling his ribs. When he started to scream, I slid my butt so that I was nearly sitting on his shoulder blades. His face was forced back into the snow.
Mark caught up to us, his entire front was covered in snow and I knew he’d taken a nose dive into the snow while trying to race over.
“Hold him down!” Mark cheered.
“What do you think I’m doing? Taking a nap?” I said as Sean once again was able to lift his face out of the snow; but only barely.
“Get off me!” Sean screamed.
Mark dropped to his knees, yanked off his right glove, and before Sean or I knew what was happening, Mark had pulled open the back of Sean’s pants and GoodNite, exposing Sean’s gleaming white butt which was nearly as white as the snow around us. Mark began shoveling snow into Sean’s pants with his one gloved hand while Sean screamed for us to stop.
With the back of his GoodNite packed with snow, Mark and I hurdled ourselves off of him. Sean quickly got to his feet; his face was streaked with frozen tears. Snow was caked to his eyebrows and the front of his hair. During the struggle, he’d lost his hat. He called us a couple of buttheads and ran away.
Mark and I were falling all over each other laughing. “Oh man that was funny!” Mark roared.
From a distance, Sean’s voice carried across the frosty air, “I hate you guys!”
It seemed to take forever for the two of us to be able to stand again and get back to shoveling snow. Every time we’d stop laughing, we’d look at each other and start all over again. We took great delight in telling and retelling the tail to each other.
“You know, we’re going to have to watch our backs now.” I told Mark “He’s going to get even with us!”
Mark began laughing again, slipped on a small patch of ice, and his feet went flying into the air. He hit the sidewalk, all the while still laughing his head off.
“You alright?” I asked him.
“Stop making me laugh!” he groaned and laughed at the same time.
Mark got back to his feet. He was holding his butt and snorting with laughter.
It almost looked like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t stop himself from giggling long enough to put two words together.
“What?” I asked him as I tried so very hard not to laugh, but failed miserably.
He took a deep breath and blurted out, “I bet Jack Frost is nipping at more than his nose by now!”
I snorted too and fell over sideways into the snow. “Oh please stop!” I too was holding my stomach and doubled over, “Bet his cheeks are nice and rosy!”
“My butt hurts!” Mark chuckled.
“My stomach hurts!” I laughed.
The two of us carried on like that the rest of the day. Sean never attempted a second military assault which was something I was very grateful for. If he had, we probably wouldn’t have seen him coming.