Unfortunately, I hadn’t double checked that Meek was still in the same spot, so when I bent over again to pull up my board shorts I bumped right into the younger boy that Meek was following out.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I tried to play it off while standing there with my shorts around my knees and my swim diaper out there for all to see.

“Oh hey Alvin! Done eating then?” Meek asked as if seeing me like that was no big deal.

That was when the boy said, “Meek look!” he pointed right at my swim diaper, “He gots one same as me.”

Not meaning to, I looked down and saw that he too was wearing a swim diaper with yellow shooting stars.

“Sheller that isn’t nice!” Meek snapped at the boy.

Oddly, Meek was the one to blush first, but I quickly followed up with my own impression of a red light bulb.
Meek tried to apologize, “Sorry man. He doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”

When I didn’t respond Meek said, “Uh, I have to take him back over to his mom. If you still want, maybe we can meet up at the…”

For the life of me I have no idea where he said, but it ended up not mattering because we found each other a short time later.

I don’t remember doing so, but I must have nodded my head or responded in some manner, because Meek took the young boys hand and led him out. I was only like twelve feet from the door, but in that short distance Sheller never once stopped looking at me in my swim diaper.

Once they were gone I quickly became aware of the fact that the other two boys were staring at me too.

You would think that it couldn’t get any more embarrassing than that, but it did. Slowly I turned my head until the older of the two boys and I made eye contact.

“Why are you wearing a diaper?” he asked.

Do you remember me telling you about the first time I met Joey and how I had passed out from embarrassment? Yeah well, that was nothing compared to how I was feeling at the instant the boy had asked me why I was wearing a diaper.

I am not sure what I might have done next, maybe run for my life or something, had not a large Asian man walked in, just as the boy had asked the question. When I say large, I mean HUGE! The guy was at least six foot tall and he had to weigh in excess of 350 pounds. He was so large that, when he walked in, his enormous bulk practically eclipsed the light from outside the changing room.

He was wearing matching flowery-blue Hawaiian shirt and shorts and was also Asian. The second I saw the man I felt that I knew him from somewhere, but couldn’t place him right away. It was probably because of everything that had happened in those couple minutes before he had walked in.

“As a matter of fact,” he started saying in extremely broken English. He spoke loud enough that the boys attention was drawn away from me and to him, “all the real professional surfers wear those, so they don’t miss out on any of the good waves.”

I couldn’t believe my ears but still, the second the boys’ attention was off of me, I had bent over and yanked my board shorts all the way up.

The large man continued talking to the two boys as he asked them, “Remember how I told you about Astronauts and Racecar drivers?”

Both boys nodded in obedient unison.

“It is the same thing for real surfers.” He said and then thrust out a hand with five sausage-like fingers.

“Mr. Holloway, I’ve been hoping to meet you all day!” He said as he nearly shook my arm off at the shoulder.

It had been so long since someone had recognized me that to be honest, it caught me off guard. I was holding my shorts in place with one hand and had the mountain of a man trying to remove my other at the shoulder.

Finally, I found my own voice as I asked, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

The younger of the two boys rudely spouted off with, “Well you should; he’s famous.”

Before the boy even finished talking, the older boy almost knocked him off his toilet with an elbow to the chest.

The large man released my hand and bowed to me as he said, “Asashōryū Akinori.”

I am sure you have no idea who Asashōryū Akinori is, but I sure did.

The instant I had heard his name I remembered where I had seen him before. It was my turn to gush, because I was standing almost toe-to-toe with one of the most famous Sumo wrestlers in the world.

“I-I-I,” was all I was able to say as I was suddenly overcome with Star Shock.

He smiled.

I lost control of the volume of my voice as I began to shake all over and nearly lost my grip on my shorts.

“OH MY GOD! I SAW YOU WRESTLE LIKE THREE YEARS AGO!”