“Mr. Gibson is an exceptional teacher,” Miss Sosa, the O.T. chimed in. “He’s very good at implementing therapies into his everyday curriculum so that students make gains throughout the year.” Nods all around the table. Inwardly I smiled a bit. Acknowledgement felt good. Had I been a bit bigger, I might’ve sat down and leaned back in my chair a bit.
“Plus, all of his students end up potty trained by the time they get to Kindergarten.” Thank you Mrs. Skinner. Not quite the endorsement I was hoping for, but I’d take it.
“What are his qualifications?” Again, she was talking about me, but not to me. Typical.
Times like this are always rough for me: Do I speak up for myself, thus asserting my professional authority, or do I rely on the so-called benevolence of Amazonian professionals to continue to speak for me?
The women sitting around the table had done enough I’d decided. Time to sell her on my own merits. “I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education with up to date certification on Early Childhood education as well as ten years of experience teaching.” I was tempted to go into professional speak and add in more technical education terms than were necessary, but decided to go with my gut and speak plainly. “I’ve got former students walking all over campus and they’re all doing quite well.”
Her nose wrinkled a bit in disgust. “And when were you potty trained?” Boom. Point Blank calling my adulthood into question.
This was a trap. I knew it was a trap. It wasn’t Raine Forrest levels of obvious, but it was still pretty blatant. If I told her that I’d been potty trained at two, she might accuse me of having a superiority complex or being uppity. If I lied and said around three or four, that could be ammo, too. Emily wasn’t even in Pull-Ups yet. Even asking about that bit of information was calling my competence into question.
I knew how to dodge this attack. “Like most skills, potty training is more about having it than when you got it.”
The mother repeated the question. “When were you potty trained?”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh, just like most people,” I told her, “it was so long ago that I don’t remember.”
Slowly, decisively, the woman asked. “Then why are you pooping your pants?”
“Excuse me?!” I felt my blood boiling.
“Why are you pooping your pants?” She said it even slower that time. Everybody, myself included, scowled.
Ms. Winters spoke up for me. “Ma’am, that is highly inappropriate!”
“Check him,” the parent of my newest student said. “After three years of changing diapers, I’d know that smell anywhere. Check him.”
The thing about skin is that it tends to tune things out. Unless things are too tight or too bulky we don’t tend to notice that we’re wearing clothes. Bugs can land on our arms and unless they skitter too much or sting or bite, we might not know that they’re there. Nobody feels how cold the water is once they’ve been in the pool long enough.
And me? I didn’t realize that I’d shit myself until the first semi-solid clump started dripping down the near back of my inner left thigh.
The world stopped. It froze. Sound didn’t register in my ears. Light and shapes and colors and the people in the room stopped registering my eyes. My jaw hung open stupidly and my eyes went wide and unblinking. My lungs didn’t contract as much as they shivered. And my heartbeat thundered through my entire body.
I had shit my pants. In public. In front of no less than five Amazons, and I hadn’t even realized it was happening until just after.
I was doomed.
Doomed.
No amount of quick thinking or careful word play or exploiting social moores or technicalities was going to save me.
Bankhead was behind me. I only knew it was her by her voice and her absence from behind her laptop at the head of the table. “Excuse me, Mr. Gibson.” Two fingers hooked into the waistband of my pants. Not even with my belt cinching everything around my waist to the point of leaving marks would those two fingers be stopped.
“No…” I whispered. Not like this. Not like this.
“Let me just che-…” the Amazon stopped mid sentence. “Whoah!” I didn’t see the look on Bankhead’s face. But I did see the look of surprise in the various therapists eyes and the smug knowing look in Mrs. Dunwhich’s.
I felt the cooling, greasy feel of brown stained shirttails being pulled out of my pants and streaking them against my backside. I felt more juicy, warm, disgusting brown streaking down my legs as my colon ejected a second shot into my slacks. Most of all, I felt the raging pain of a massive cramp welling up inside me like a balloon that was filling up far too fast.