All the stress made me suck my thumb more frequently in front of her until it became strange for her to see me without my thumb in my mouth. I started having ‘accidents’ in my diaper before going to sleep. I’d be sitting there on the couch beside her watching TV and suddenly discover I was peeing in my diaper. This caused her to go out and buy a plastic upholstered easy chair for me and make several terry cloth covers for the bottom cushion to keep me from damaging the chair. After that she refused to allow me to sit anywhere in the living room but ‘my’ chair. She stopped letting me wear anything over my diapers at home and developed the disconcerting habit of sticking her fingers down the front of my diapers at odd times to see if I was wet. She bought several pairs of loose fitting warming suits and jackets for me to wear over my diapers when we had to go out together. Pauline also bought some large overalls for wear at home that she intended to modify into rompers by ripping out the leg and crotch seams and putting in large snaps. She decorated the front of the bib with appliqués of teddy bears she had bought at the fabric store. She would greet me at the door every night when I came home from work and take me directly to my bedroom to put me into diapers and rompers for the evening.
After I had an ‘accident’ at lunch one day and had to come home for a clean pair of trousers she hid my shorts and made me wear incontinence briefs under my clothes.
I could feel myself slipping more under her control every day. My behavior at home became childish; I started throwing temper tantrums if I couldn’t watch the TV programs I wanted to see. She would wait patiently for me to finish, then tell me I’d been naughty and put me to bed. When my tantrums became more frequent, she stopped letting me have drinks with caffeine in response. She explained that both anger and caffeine increased the production of stomach acid and if I couldn’t hold my temper, she would have to do what she could to keep my ulcer from becoming acute. My morning coffee was replaced by a glass of milk before I went to work. I had milk at every meal and the unaccustomed milk sugars made my stools loose.
I was losing it and I knew it wouldn’t be very long before I had an “accident” in my diaper of a different type. When I broached the subject to her, she introduced bran into my diet. The bran made more stools more firm, but my regularity increased to the point where I had to go several times a day. Fortunately, ulcers were common among my colleagues and the trips to the bathroom at work were interpreted as symptomatic of a worsening stomach condition.
Dinner at home had become pure hell for me. Pauline had kept her promise to the doctor immediately and stopped serving me the spicy foods that I enjoyed. Gradually the meals she served me became simpler and more suited to a child’s taste than an adult’s. She still ate adult meals, the money she saved by serving me hot dogs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was spent on more expensive dishes like Rack of Lamb and Filet Minion for herself. Pauline started monitoring my bowel habits constantly. She would ask me every morning before I went to work whether I had had a bowel movement. If I hadn’t, she would take my bologna (ugh!) sandwich out of my lunch bag and replace it with a plastic baggie of prunes (double ugh!).