“Hi Julie.” The girl said.
“Hi.”
There was a pause. Then the girl spoke up. “I’m Sam. I’m guessing you don’t remember me?”
Julie hadn’t recognized the girl at all and just assumed they had never met. But that was obviously not the case. She looked again. The girl looked maybe a bit familiar, but Julie couldn’t place her.
“I’m sorry, I don’t…” Julie started.
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s not at all surprising. We had math class together like 2 years ago I think back in middle school. Pre-algebra.”
Julie thought back, “With Mr. Minimede?”
“Yea, exactly. I was in 8th grade and you must have been in 7th grade. Math isn’t exactly my favorite subject. I probably looked a lot different too.”
It suddenly hit Julie. “Sam Pritchard!? Oh my gosh.”
Sam smiled. “Yea, that’s me.”
Julie did remember Sam, but she was struggling to believe this was the same person. The girl sitting next to her looked like somebody who could have been an athlete. The Sam she remembered was a LOT bigger.
“Wow, you uh, lost…”
“A lot of weight? Yea I know. I was in a bad place back in middle school.” Sam went on, “I had some major issues with self esteem back then and, well, I had some other issues to. Long story. But yea, I was over weight and didn’t care back then. It actually got so bad I started having diabetes and other major health problems. You know, it was actually the summer after that year that things were the worst. I started having a lot of accidents and my parents made me wear diapers. The doctors told me I was going to probably be in diapers for the rest of my life if I didn’t make some major changes.”
“Wow.” Was all Julie could think to say.
“Yea. But you know what, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I had been pretending that I didn’t care about anything, especially my body. But for whatever reason, the diapers were the kick in the rear I guess I needed. I told my parents that I wanted to change. They didn’t really understand how serious I was at first. But eventually they did. It took me almost a full year before I lost 100 pounds. And from there I just kept going.”
“Wow, I mean, that is amazing. I seriously didn’t recognize you.”
Sam laughed. “Yea, I get that a bit. And honestly, I am not even the same person as I was back then. I was seeing a psychologist for a while there and I finally dealt with some issues I needed to deal with. That probably made a bigger difference for me than the whole diet and exercise thing if you can believe it.” Sam took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s amazing what you can do when you really try. It took me a long time, but I was able to really change. And I’m finally all better and have a clean bill of health for the first time in years.”
Julie had a thought pop in her head. It came out of her mouth before she really had a chance to think if she should be asking this. “Wait, so do you still wear diapers?”
“Actually no. It took me a long time, but I stopped wearing like 6 months ago. I probably could have stopped before that, but I was just really paranoid about having an accident without a diaper on. I had been in diapers for close to 2 years and re-potty training is harder than you might think. But I still come to these lunches since I know a lot of people here.”
