“One thing that intrigued me was the boys who stood up to pee. I knew that girls were supposed to sit down on the potty, but I’d never questioned why. So one day at home, I decided I’d find out why girls weren’t supposed to stand. I stood in front of the potty, pulled down my pants and panties to my ankles, and peed — with the expected result. I had to get my mom to help me get some clean clothes, but she seemed very amused when I explained what I was doing, although I did get a nice lecture about ‘why we need to sit when we go potty.’”

Erin smiled in spite of herself. The neighborhood the girls were now walking through was a bit less well-kept as Hailey’s neighborhood — it wasn’t a poor neighborhood by any stretch, but there were no longer sidewalks or curbs, just a ditch on either side of the road that all the driveways had to bridge, and the lots and houses were smaller. A couple young kids were riding plastic tricycles around their driveway; they smiled and waved at the passersby and Hailey and Erin waved back. Hailey continued her history.

“The first actual accident I had was in my back yard. It was a cool fall day of the same year, and I’d been playing outside for a while. I was starting to feel the need to go potty, but I knew if I went back inside to the toilet my mom would probably tell me it was late enough to stay inside for the evening. Remembering Kristy’s accident, I decided I’d try the same; after all, nobody else was there to make fun of me for it. So I released my bladder into my panties, and as I felt a little urge from my bowels as well, I soiled myself a little as well. Immediately I questioned why Kristy would have cried about it. It definitely felt weird, but it was a cool feeling to be six years old running around outside with wet pants and a small mess on my backside. I supposed Kristy had been crying simply because the other kids had been making fun of her. Looking back I realize she probably really didn’t care for the accident — I know now that I’m weird in liking how accidents feel.

“My mother soon found out what I’d done, and helped me get cleaned up. I didn’t get in trouble, but I decided not to test her patience too much. So I didn’t deliberately have an accident again, but on a few occasions I decided not to make a lot of effort to get to the toilet on time, especially if I was doing something else fun at the time.

“So really, I probably had an accident every two months or so after that, but by the time I turned eight, I was doing this less and less often, and I’d decided that I was too old to have my parents clean up after my accidents like that.

“But I soon realized that I missed having accidents. I would just have to clean up after myself, and I didn’t really want my parents to know I was still having them, so I’d have to clean up after myself. The easy one I discovered was at the pool, I could sit on the toilet without taking my swimsuit off, and pee through it. It wasn’t quite as fun as having a legitimate accident, but as I had a dark swimsuit and it was already wet from the pool water anyway, nobody could tell.”

Erin’s eyes lit up at this, but she said nothing. Hailey went on.