All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 61: Not Ready

In the four weeks following Thanksgiving, my theory that my potty training couldn't go any worse was tested and found to be lacking.

Lisa and I had stuck to our schedule of taking potty breaks between each class for three weeks. Lisa only wet herself on one occasion, at the beginning of the second week. For me, the most I could do was two consecutive days without any accidents.

That wouldn't be so bad if there had been signs that I was making some sort of progress, but the random nature of my accidents continued to befuddle me. There were days where everything was good, and then days where nothing seemed to be able to go right, with no clear idea of what was causing the difference between them.

It was the last day of school before our two-week-long Christmas break began. Christmas break was always something to be excited about, but I needed it now more than ever. Two weeks of being able to continue practicing holding in my bladder, free from the stress of midterms and crowded restrooms. I'd be all ready for a fresh start next year. I already knew what my New Year's resolution was going to be.

We had a number of get-togethers already planned, though we had to work around the holiday plans everyone's families had.

We were getting together at Samantha's place Saturday afternoon, though a sleepover wasn't going to work because Samantha was going to be off to California the following morning.

There wasn't anything else planned until after Christmas when we were going over for a sleepover at Lisa's place on New Year's Eve.

The only good thing about this next meetup at Samantha's place was that it wasn't going to be a sleepover. The last thing I needed was Mom calling Samantha's mom to inform her of my bedwetting, and all the questions that would come of that because that topic hadn't been discussed prior to the one and only sleepover I'd had at Samantha's place.

The nice thing was that Lisa, with her lack of any siblings, made for the ideal place for future sleepovers, so it was possible that I could avoid spending the night at Desi's or Samantha's places in the near future at least.

After a week of struggling with being able to change wet pull-ups quickly enough to get to class on time, including two occasions where a teacher had publicly chastised me for being late, I worked up the courage to make a massive change to the outfits I was wearing to school.

A thorough examination of my closet revealed that I did, in fact, have two dresses that would work for me to wear to school, as long as I wore some thigh-high socks to compensate for how much colder it was getting.

Lisa proved to be more than happy to pass along another trio of dresses that she had outgrown. Our height difference came in handy. While I wanted a dress that would make sure my pull-up was fully covered, I didn't want to wear something that went all the way down to my ankles. I felt incredibly self-aware the first few days I started wearing the dresses, but apart from my friends, I didn't receive any comments about the sudden change.

For Mom's part, she wasn't even aware that I was wearing different clothes than usual. I would usually get dressed and leave for school after she had dropped Emilia off at daycare and gone to work. And on days she was working from home, she was too focused on her computer to notice what I was wearing. The dresses also came off the moment I got back to my bedroom, swapped for my familiar jeans and hoodie.

As disappointing as the first three weeks after Thanksgiving had been, this most recent one had proven to be far worse.

Emboldened by her recent successes, Lisa wanted to change the potty-training schedule, moving ahead to a much more difficult phase.

I hadn't yet managed to stay dry at school for three consecutive days, let alone nine like Lisa had, but in my zeal to keep up with her, I offered to move ahead to the next phase this final week before Christmas break was to begin.