The trouble all started, I think, back in July when we got the dog.

Mom had been asking me what I wanted for my birthday and I kept telling her that I wanted a dog. I
could tell that she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having
a dog around cause she kept suggesting other things that I
might like (clothes, a new CD player, rollerblades, stuff
like that) but I never changed my story. We finally agreed
that if I had an 85% average at the end of my sophomore year
in high school, that she would get me the dog. So even
though I turned 15 back in May, I had to wait till we got
our final report cards at the end of June to get the dog.
One of our neighbors had a dog that had puppies in May, so I
had them hold one for me till July. So now I was the proud
owner of a black Labrador puppy, female type. She was so
neat, and really fun to play with. Course Mom’s rule was
that I had to do all the work of taking care of her and that
included getting her trained and housebroken. Maybe it was
different when she was with her mother and brothers and
sisters, but when she came to live with us, she wanted
constant attention. She followed me around all the time –
which was kind of cute. But she also had to be taken outside
about every two hours or she’d make a mess on the floor.
During the day wasn’t bad, with summer vacation and all, but
I really hated getting up every couple of hours during the
night. After a couple of weeks of this I was really dragging
– like I was walking around half asleep all the time. And
that was when it happened the first time. I can remember
getting back in bed around 3am after taking Penny outside
for about the fourth time that night. I think I remember
having a dream about swimming in the ocean or something, and
then I woke up and the bed was wet and I was cold. At first
I couldn’t figure out what had happened and then I realized
that I had wet the bed. Was I embarrassed – like I hadn’t
done that since I was a little kid. It really wasn’t sopping
wet or anything, so I took off my wet PJ bottoms and dropped
them on the floor by the bed and kind of scrunched over to
the side of the mattress where it was dry and tried to go
back to sleep – till Penny woke me up at 5:30am, whining and
begging to be taken outdoors again. So I got up and took her
outside and then got back in bed and tried to sleep. The
worst thing was not the having to scrunch way over to the
side to get away from the wet spot, it was sleeping without
my PJ bottoms. That felt really different – like everything
just flopped around and rubbed on the sheets. When I finally
got out of bed for good later that morning, the wet spot had
pretty much dried up, and you couldn’t really see anything,
so I just made my bed up like nothing had happened and put
my mostly-dry PJ bottoms in the dresser drawer and didn’t
say anything to Mom.
Everything was normal for a week and I figured that I’d
just had too much Pepsi before I went to bed that night, or
I was really tired from taking Penny out and I was sleeping
so hard I didn’t know what I was doing, or whatever. Then it
happened again. The second time wasn’t as bad – like my bed
wasn’t nearly as wet as the first time – it was more like it
was just kind of damp. But I had still wet the bed again.
What a bummer! It was kind of like that for the rest of the
summer. I’d be OK for a week or so, and then oops! I tried
drinking less liquids, and taking a leak just before I went
to bed. I even tried setting my alarm to wake up around 1am
to go and take a leak, but none of it worked. It didn’t
bother me so much as embarrass me. Like I wasn’t really
being inconvenienced or anything – but I sure didn’t want
anybody to find out about it.
Mom learned about it just about the time that school
started in September. I guess what tipped her off was the
smell. Like it wasn’t really bad or anything, but my
mattress had begun to smell just a little like the boy’s
urinals at school – you know the dried piss smell? She asked
me what was going on and I told her. It wasn’t the easiest
conversation I’ve ever had with her. Don’t get me wrong, she
wasn’t yelling or screaming or anything, but it’s kind of
difficult to tell your Mom that you’ve wet the bed when
you’re 15 years old!

She was pretty understanding though, said that it was
probably just cause I was tired with the dog waking me up
all night, or maybe I had just been drinking to much soda
before I went to bed, or maybe I was just a little stressed
out with school or something. So she told me just to get
more rest, and not to drink any soda after supper, and
things would probably be OK. I didn’t tell her that I had
already tried all those things and they hadn’t worked. But
the funny thing is that things were OK for awhile. That is,
for a couple of weeks after we talked I didn’t have any
problems. Then it happened again – and this time I really
soaked the bed – like it was sopping wet. I swear, when I
woke up and got out of bed it sounded like the mattress
gurgled. After that, Mom figured that I’d better have our
doctor check me out. He did and there wasn’t anything wrong.
He said that these things sometimes happen and to just not
worry about it and it would go away pretty soon. The problem
was that it didn’t go away. About once a week I would wet
the bed. Usually I’d have some sort of dream and when I woke
up I’d be wet. A couple of times I dreamed that I was going
into the boy’s room at school and I had to pee really bad
and I had to wait for a couple of minutes cause there were
other guys in there ahead of me and I was standing there
with my legs pressed together because I had to go really
bad, and when I finally got to a urinal and unzipped my
jeans and let loose it felt really good. And then I’d wake
up and I was all wet. A couple of times I woke up just as I
started to pee in my bed but I couldn’t stop – once it
started, it kept on coming.

I didn’t like school as much my Junior year. I guess it
was better than my Sophomore year cause I only had one year
of school to go after this year, and being a Junior is
better than being a Sophomore, and LOTS better than being a
Freshman. But there’s a lot of pressure to get the grades,
and the classes were a lot harder – so I was spending a lot
of time studying and doing homework. I have a couple of
girls that I’m friendly with, but there’s nothing really
serious yet. Mostly I hang around with a group of other
guys. Like, we’ve know each other since we started school
and are pretty good friends. One of them, Jeff, is almost
more like a brother – not that we fight like brothers, just
that we understand each other real well. So Jeff and I hang
around a lot together and talk about things to each other
that we wouldn’t talk about to other people. One day I asked
him if he ever wet the bed, and he said that maybe once a
year or so he’d have an “accident.” He said the wet dreams
made more of a mess, though. And then he asked me why I
wanted to know and I just said “….. just wondering …..”
or something like that and didn’t say anything else.
So, school was going along about as good as could be
expected. And I was still having my occasional “accidents.”
Even with changing the sheets and everything, my bedroom got
to smell pretty bad cause the mattress kept getting soaked.
The minute you walked into my bedroom the urinal smell would
hit you. It got so it smelled worse than the boy’s rooms at
school and they smell pretty bad. Like our school is pretty
old and we have these radiators along the walls for heat in
the wintertime and some of the guys think that it’s funny to
pee on the radiators instead of in the toilets so you can
guess what it smells like in there. (Some of those guys are
so gross. Like, one day I came in and three of them were
having a pissing contest. They lined up along the wall and
were seeing who could piss the farthest. Geez, the floor was
all wet and slippery. I think one guy got it to go about 4
feet.) Every so often some of my friends used to stop by my
place and we’d go to my bedroom to listen to music, or trade
baseball cards, or play with my SEGA. But I started making
excuses not to have them over cause of the smell. I also
started taking a shower in the morning before I went to
school, instead of in the evening. Maybe it was my
imagination, but I think that after spending a night on my
smelly mattress I might’ve smelled a little like pee myself
in the morning. In October, Mom solved that problem by
getting a plastic cover for my mattress. That sealed in the
smell. The only problem was that when I wet the bed now,
there was less for the piss to sink into, and I’d wake up
freezing cold, lying in a pool of pee. No matter how hard
she washed them, my PJs and bed sheets got all stained and
yellow. I asked Mom to be real careful not to let anybody
else see them. My accidents only happened maybe once a week
or so. And sometimes I’d be OK for a couple of weeks. So I
figured that I could live with that – just as long as nobody
at school found out about it! Actually, I think Jeff
might’ve guessed what was happening cause there were a
couple of times when I’d have him come over even though I
wouldn’t let the other guys and one time he said something
like “….. geez Steve, you need to air out your room …..”
Jeff was OK – even if he guessed, he’d never say anything to
anybody.