Diaper Games
by Jennifer Mueller

	The world has changed a lot since I was a girl. I grew up in 
Brooklyn in the 1950's. My world consisted of my street. My street! 
There were 10 brownstone apartments with 6 families each, and each 
family had at least two kids. Across the street were another 10 
apartments all the same. Do the math. There were almost 250 kids on the 
block.
	Let me tell you about the summer I was 11 years old.
	I lived in the third story apartment in number 62, two doors down 
from the candy store. Everybody's house was the same (or a mirror 
image, depending what side of the hall you lived on). You came into a 
big kitchen with the bathroom off to one side. Then you came to my mom 
and dad's bedroom, then our bedroom that I shared with my kid brother. 
Bradley was 8 this summer, and he was named after the World War II 
general of the same name. I am sure glad they didn't name him "Omar."
	Beyond our bedroom was the "front room." which had the huge piece 
of furniture with the 8-inch screen that was the source of so many 
evenings of entertainment.
	It was 4 rooms, end-to-end in what was called a "railroad flat" I 
guess because the rooms were lined up like cars on a train.
	My cousins Stephanie and Charlie lived right across the hall from 
us. Stephanie was 9 and Charlie was 7.
	There were two other families in the building with which we were 
friendly; the Fishers who had Claire (8) and Raymond (6) and the 
Rossini's who had Gina (7) and Tony (8). On the bottom floor, were the 
Browns who had a baby and the Goldbergs who were elderly and had no 
children. I think they owned the building.
	As kids, our lives revolved around the street. It was the center 
of our social universe. In those days, there wasn't much traffic, and 
you could actually play in the street if you were old enough. The older 
boys pretty much dominated the blacktop with a stickball game that 
seemingly went on from sun up to sun down all summer long. At 9 PM all 
the kids were in and in bed, and the street, as noisy as it was during 
the day, became quiet at night. I remember lying in bed, a full room 
from the front room window and hear the adults talking on the stoop 
three floors down.
	The moms seemed to have a routine. In the morning they would shop 
for whatever it was we were going to have for dinner that night. The 
butcher was a half block on the cross street, and the grocery store was 
on the other end of the block. At the right time of year, you could buy 
vegetables from the man with the push cart, and on Friday afternoon the 
man with the horse-drawn wagon sold fish!
	The other part of the routine was the daily cleaning. Mom washed 
the linoleum floors every day. She washed clothes every day. She cooked 
dinner every day. And she did it all between about 1 PM and 4 PM. It 
was this period that she (and all the other moms, it seems) banished us 
kids to the street.
	You couldn't get in trouble in the street. Someone's mom always 
had her head out the front room window. If you did something, your mom 
would find out about it before you could get back upstairs. Everybody's 
dad worked. Everyone's mom stayed at home. I don't know if the moms 
worked out a schedule to assure that someone was always on watch, but 
there they were like prairie dogs popping their heads out of a 
vertically tipped landscape.
	So the 8 of us, Stephanie, Claire, Gina, me and our brothers 
found ourselves out on the stoop right after lunch every day. Being out 
was better than being in, and once you got playing, you didn't want to 
stop for any reason. You lost all track of time until your mom called 
you in. Everyone's mom had a distinctive voice, and she used it at 
maximum volume to bring her brood back to the roost.
	Playing hard, and losing track of time was particularly hard on 
the boys. Somewhere along the line, you have to go to the bathroom. 
None of the kids wanted to stop playing, go upstairs and annoy mom (who 
probably had a wet floor) just to go to the bathroom. So they had three 
choices: hold it, do it outside, or do it in your pants.
	The younger boys frequently had accidents, and got embarrassed 
when it showed in their shorts. Other boys picked a space between 
parked cars and tried to do it as discretely as possible. I don't think 
there was a girl on our block who hadn't seen a boy pee at least once, 
so that square in our sex education was checked.
	The girls, held it. We seemed to be able to pay more attention.
	Raymond and Charlie were habitual wetters. Their moms put them in 
diapers and it was our jobs as their sisters to watch after them. At 
first we brought the diapers and stuff down with us, but it made more 
sense to leave the stuff in the vestibule (that's the entranceway 
hallway for those of you not familiar with brownstone architecture). We 
had a small table opposite the mailboxes, and we kept the stuff in the 
drawers.
	So, every day after lunch one of us girls would go down the 
cellar, pick up a pail of water, and put it on the stoop to put the 
dirty diapers in. At the beginning of the summer, it was pretty much me 
helping Stephanie and Claire change their brothers as they needed. Gina 
was eager to help and we decided to train her too.
	After a week or so, we found that Brad and Tony were getting 
jealous of the treatment the other two boys were getting. Also, they 
hated having to come "in" to go to the bathroom and were too 
embarrassed to do it out in the street. They frequently complained that 
we spent too much time playing with the younger boys and resented that 
we'd actually stop play with them to attend to our diapering duties.
	I jokingly said to my brother, "You want us to diaper you too?" 
He blushed and stammered a "no" but I could always tell when my brother 
was lying. I whispered to him, "Come on, it will be our secret. Nobody 
else has to know."
	He looked up and down the block as if people could tell what he 
was thinking just looking at him.
	"Come on," I urged, I've seen mom change you before. It's no big 
deal.
	"OK," he agreed.
	Although it was "no big deal" all of us girls decided to attend 
my brother's first diapering. Gina and Claire seemed particularly 
interested. Clair was in Brad's class in school. Gina was surprised 
that an older boy would let her see him like this.
	The deed done, we sent him back out onto the street. If you knew 
what to look for, you could tell that there was something under his 
shorts. Brad starting wearing looser shorts to accommodate the 
thickness. I smirked at that thought. I was trying to wear tighter and 
shorter shorts, and my brother was going in the opposite direction.
	Brad seemed to be relieved of the responsibility of holding it. 
And relieved is exactly what he got. We made sure to change him out 
just before mom called us, and his diaper was almost always wet.
	Tony wondered how his playmate was able to go all those hours 
without having to go "in." That was the undoing of our plot. We had 
just gotten Brad onto the changing table when Tony came in. At first he 
was in too much shock to say anything, then he just broke out laughing, 
"So that's how you're doing it!"
	I was quick to seize the opportunity, "We can fix you up too. 
Wouldn't you like that?"
	His sister was jumping up and down in anticipation. Tony just 
flapped his mouth, so I filled in the words for him. "Come on. Brad 
does it. You can do it too. Nobody else has to know. Just think of it. 
No more going "in;" you can stay out and play all day."
	My argument worked. We soon had four diapered boys under our 
command. And the summer was just beginning! Gina in particular felt so 
grown up diapering her older brother.
	At first we were changing the boys as they needed it, but after a 
while we decided that we might as well change them out on a schedule so 
we wouldn't have to interrupt our play to do it. We decided that we'd 
make a game out of it.
	We used the time-honored "paper, scissors, rock" to determine the 
order in which we girls would diaper for the afternoon. Once 
establishing who goes first for the girls, we had to decide who would 
go first for the boys.
	To do this, we invented the "Diaper Game."
	The game would start with the four of us facing each other in a 
square with our hands at our sides. The trick was how we clapped each 
others' hands as we spelled out the word "diaper" D-I-A---P-E-R over 
and over again. It was sort of a four-girl version of patty cake. Each 
time we'd spell it faster and faster until we'd make a mistake.
	On "D" we clap our own hands
On "I" we clap both hands of the girl opposite us, straight across, 
right hand to left hand and vice versa.
On "A" we clap the girl to the right with the right hand and the girl 
to the left with our left hand.
On "P" we clap across from us again, left hand to left hand
On "E" we clap across from us again, right hand to right hand
On "R" we clap our own hands behind our back.
	We only had four boys so we assigned "D," "I," "A," and "P." to 
Brad, Charlie, Raymond and Tony respectively. If we screwed up on "E" 
or "R" it was a "do over" and we'd start all over again. The letter of 
the word determined which boy got diapered, and the round at which we 
screwed up determined how many diapers we got to put on him.
	The next thing to decide was how many pins to put in the diaper.
	The girl whose turn it was to diaper would bounce a rubber ball 
to the cadence of "Pins and needles, needles and pins. How many pins do 
we put on him?"
	She'd bounce the ball and catch it on the first bounce, and we'd 
shout "ones-ises."
	She'd bounce it again, clap her hands and catch it on the first 
bounce and we'd shout "twos-ises."
	She'd bounce it again, clap her hands, clap her hands under her 
right leg and catch it on the first bounce, and we'd shout "threes-
ies."
	Four was clap, clap under right leg, clap. Five was clap, clap 
under right leg, clap, clap under left leg. Six was clap, clap under 
right leg, clap, clap under left leg, clap. Seven was clap, clap under 
right leg, clap, clap under left leg, clap, clap behind her back. Eight 
was clap under right leg, clap, clap under left leg, clap, clap behind 
her back, turn around once.
	Most of the time we wound up with 6 pins. On a really good day I 
could do 8, but that rarely happened.
	Then came the most fun part, and that was to call the boy "in" 
for his diapering. We'd go down to where the boy was playing and chant, 
"Who poops? Who poops? Who poops, two scoops?" Then the girl whose turn 
it was to diaper would call out his name. For example, "I pick Tony. 
Tony baby, Tony boy, let me change your diaper; let me be your joy. 
Pee-pee diapers, pee-pee pants, you're the boy that we'll make dance."
	We got our own little following. When kids saw us four girls 
approaching one of the boys, they knew that a show was just to begin 
and gather around. Some of the girls approached us and asked us if we 
really diapered our brothers. Our answer was "What do you think?"
	Well, the boys' secret couldn't be kept for long. Some of the 
older boys heard our taunting, and decided to check things out for 
themselves. They distracted our boys and got the jump on them. Holding 
them down they pulled down their pants. All the kids gathered around 
and laughed.
	I was outraged, I ran down the block as soon as I saw what was 
happening and threw my full 87 pounds on this huge teenage goon. I beat 
upon him with my fists and yelled at him to stop. I'm not even sure he 
knew I was there. Eventually, the bullies let the boys up and we 
retreated to our end of the block.
	By this time all four boys were crying. We sat on the stoop and 
put our arms around them. A couple of kids rode by on their bikes or 
ran by and yelled insults, but mostly the kids went back to playing. 
One boy stopped by and gave his condolences. He said he understood, and 
didn't think the boys were weird or anything, but was very quick to 
point out that *he* didn't wear diapers.
	Some of the girls stopped by and wanted to know if they could 
watch us change the boys. We told them that it was a private club and 
that if they wanted to join, they had to bring their own diapers, and 
their own boys to diaper. Over the course of the next couple of days, 
we had enough boys to spell out a "full" D-I-A-P-E-R.
	It was a great summer. We changed the boys at least twice every 
afternoon. Most of the time we played other games just like all the 
other kids on the block. The rest of the kids got used to the diaper 
boys, and just sort of accepted them for what they were.
	We girls went up in status as THE girls who diapered the diaper 
boys. Other girls were jealous of us, and other boys held us in awe.
	But all good things come to an end. Summer ended and the school 
year began. Playtime was limited to the few hours between getting home 
from school and dinner, which for this blue-collar neighborhood was 
always early.
	We moved away to Long Island to a "real" house just after 
Christmas. I lost track of Claire and Gina. Stephanie still visited 
with Chuck (as he wanted to be called), but that was pretty much 
limited to family gatherings around the holidays.
	Even now as adults, Stephanie and I share our memories of our 
diapering summer. Chuck remembers his last summer in diapers with fond 
memories too, although even to this day after decades to get over it, 
he still blushes just a little bit. If Stephanie and I giggle just a 
little, he forgives us.