My younger sister is everything that I’m not. It’s as if after the stork delivered me, my parents made a list of all the revisions they wanted and put in a request for her. She’s only about a year younger than me, but you might not know that based on how our parents treat us.
She’s confident and outgoing. I stutter every time I get nervous. She gets good grades. I’m already a reading level behind her. She’s feminine and graceful. I’m lanky and awkward. She was potty-trained before her second birthday. I’ve almost never gone a day in my life where I haven’t wet or messed myself.
I couldn’t fix all of those things, but as I pulled on a pair of plain, pink, cotton panties, I felt as if I could at last bring some sort of equilibrium to our relationship.
Today is Thanksgiving, and a bunch of relatives from out-of-town will be arriving at our house less than an hour from now. It has been a couple years since I’ve last seen my cousins, and the experience is one that still centers in my nightmares. That was the summer before I’d started kindergarten. While even at that age I was aware of the differences between myself and my sister, I hadn’t fully grasped how unusual it was for a girl who had just turned five to rarely be able to make it to the toilet in time. Needless to say, my cousins, who are all my age or older, tormented me relentlessly, aided and abetted by my sister.
That was the beginning of my education that I was different. And different isn’t good. Different is weird, embarrassing, awkward, and humiliating. Different makes you stand out. Different paints a bright red target on your back for the kids who are normal. Different lets them know who they can get away with picking on and who they can’t.
So that is why I was terrified of having to wear pull-ups around my cousins again. For months, I had begged, and begged, and begged my parents to let me go back to panties on Thanksgiving. Their response was always the same. I couldn’t start using panties until I showed that I could go to the potty consistently without having any accidents. I tried so hard. I really did. But the best I could get in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving where two separate days where I had been able to keep my pull-ups clean the whole day long.
To my good luck, one of those dry days had been yesterday. When mommy came to check on my diaper this morning it was wet, but that wasn’t a surprise. I begged her incessantly to let me wear panties since I had gone without having an accident the whole previous day. She relented and had grabbed some unused panties from a package up on the top shelf of my closet.
I’d put the panties on a few minutes ago. It had been almost a year since I had last been allowed to wear them. They were the feeling of freedom. There wasn’t any padding resting on my bottom. I could walk without any fear that it would look like I was waddling. And, best of all, no one could accuse me of being a baby.
My younger sister, Elaine, knew better than to tease me directly in front my parents, but when they were out of sight, anything was fair game for her. We didn’t share the same bedroom, but that didn’t stop her from barging in while I was getting dressed, or, even worse, getting changed by mommy or daddy.
“Good morning baby,” she said, peeking her head through the door.
“I’m not a baby!” I shouted back, raising my voice partly to convince her and partly to convince myself.
Elaine didn’t look particularly convinced. To prove it to her, I pulled down my leggings enough to show the panties I had on.
“See! I’m not wearing pull-ups.”