Looking back, though, she couldn’t help but wonder if that didn’t have more to do with their parents not having any Pull-Ups to put her in, since they’d gotten rid of the last half bag or so before the move. What would her mom have done if they -did- have those extra Pull-Ups lying around? Or, even, if they’d had diapers lying around, like the girl had sitting in the very back of her closet?

“Hurry up,” she could imagine her mom saying, bursting into the girl’s room, as she would often do in those days. “We need to leave for church in…” And then she’d see the way the girl was standing, holding her hands in front of her crotch, and the redness in her cheeks, and then slowly, she’d sniff the air. “What did you do?” she’d ask accusingly.

And the girl could see herself squirming, sniffling. “It was just a little accident,” she’d try to explain.

Her mother would sigh. “I thought you were a big girl. Do big girls poop in their pants?” The girl would shake her head sadly. “But you did, didn’t you?” And she would nod. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do with you. Obviously I can’t trust you to keep your pretty new clothes clean, now can I?”

“No, you can…” the girl would protest, only to get cut off.

“I think I’m looking at some pretty convincing evidence to the contrary. It’s a good thing we kept those old diapers, huh?”