The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers

Chapter 22: Euphemisms

Mesmerized by what I was seeing, I watched Hannah swing for another minute. Once Emma had gotten her cousin started with a push, Hannah didn't have any issues maintaining her momentum on the swing set. Hannah swung her legs back and forth in a rhythm that kept her flying high into the sky each time she swung toward me.

Every time Hannah was vaulted up into the air by the swing, the wind seemed to catch her skirt without fail, lifting it up enough to give me a brief glimpse of what I was by now one hundred percent certain was a pull-up. I wondered if Hannah knew how little her outfit did to conceal the pull-up and if that was something that concerned her in any way.

Emma was standing next to me in front of the swing set, but she had pulled out her phone and was tapping away at it. If Emma had gotten a glimpse of her cousin's undergarments, she didn't say anything to me.

Despite the suspicion that I had heard some crinkling from Hannah as we walked to the park, I was still somewhat surprised to find that Hannah was wearing a pull-up. Emma's tale about Hannah wetting herself on the couch – and her statement that she thought Hannah ought to be put back in diapers during the day as well as at night – had made it appear as though Hannah hadn't been wearing any daytime protection.

But I was certain my eyes hadn't deceived me.

I had accepted Emma's statement about Hannah's bedwetting without thinking too hard on the matter. After all, my sister had wet the bed until she was my age, and it was clear from the advertisements I'd seen that pull-ups were sold for bedwetters the same age as Hannah and me.

So, finding out that a thirteen-year-old girl was still wetting the bed – though unusual – wasn't a surprise. And, from what I'd learned recently in conversations with my parents and Grace, there seemed to be some clear medical explanations for why a kid my age could experience bedwetting.

But this – a girl my age needing to wear a pull-up during the day – was something altogether different to consider. It was like that five- or six-year-old girl I had seen getting her pull-up changed at the mall last week, another shock to my preconceptions about pull-ups and who used them.

But why? That was the question I couldn't escape. Why would a girl my age have difficulty controlling her bladder while she was awake? I wanted to pee my pants, and even trying to get my body to do it intentionally took an insane amount of effort. Using the toilet was natural, and it took a lot of convincing to get my body to do otherwise.

So, what was the deal with Hannah?

I looked around the playground. It had been several years since I had lost interest in running through it. We weren't the only people using the playground by far. There were a couple of younger kids on swings further down the line on the swing set, and behind us on the playground, and another dozen or so from toddlers to kids a couple years younger than others running around on different play sets and equipment.

I cringed a little as Hannah's skirt lifted up to flash her pull-up again. I found myself getting embarrassed at the thought of what anyone else at the park would think of Hannah – and by association, Emma and me – if they were to notice that Hannah was wearing a pull-up, and about the derogatory word Emma had used to describe her cousin on the way to the park.

As my parents had explained from their own experience, bedwetting was a normal thing that could happen to any kid, so while it was still embarrassing to have my family view me as a bedwetter, I could handle that as it allowed me to get pull-ups for myself.

I remember that Emma had mentioned that her cousin had autism as if that was a one-size-fits-all explanation for all of her strange behavior. That had to be the explanation for why the girl wasn't smart enough to use the toilet, despite being a teenager.