A Kid Like Me

Chapter 1 Arrivals

The truck lurched and bobbed along as we traversed down the dirt track to the farmhouse. With each jolt aunt Alice swayed in the center seat squeezing me against the door of Murph's 83 Ford pickup. Each time my aunt would reach over to steady herself against the door, showing the sweat stained under sleeve of her cotton print dress. Mildly nauseous by the time the truck rumbled to a stop in the drive, I spilled out the door and found myself dizzily standing on firm ground for the first time since leaving the foster home in McLean Virginia. There I stood, a scared-silly ten year old with an uncle and aunt I had never met before: "borrowed" so to speak from the D.C. Department of Social Services.

My aunt Alice slid out after me and stood up shaking the dust off her dress and setting her hat to rights. Uncle Murph came down round the cab and stood next to his wife looking down at me. It would have been bad enough if I hadn't wet my pants on the way down the road. We had been driving straight in from Billings, some 3 hours away, and they’d been in such a rush to get back after picking me up at the airport, that I hadn’t thought to ask to go then. I had been holding it for hours, sorta fraid to ask to stop, and then as we bounced down that dirt road to the ranch, things had just let go. I was painfully aware of the dark blotch on my blue fleece pants, and if I could've found a hole I would have crawled into it and pulled the ground over me.

            It had been a year and a half since mom had disappeared. One day she just up and went. Never came back. Dad left before I was born. Never married mom, didn't want no kids. Neighbors said mom went off to find drugs. No matter, she never did much anyway. Mostly I scrounged on the street from the time I was five. Learned not to bother her much when her friends came in. Sometimes she'd just turned mean, and when they all split she'd come looking for me. I learned quick to get my hide outer there too. When she was like that. Broke my leg once. I was seven. Didn't mean much though, lots of kids get worse. Told the doc I fell off a tree. After mom split, I tried living off what I could find, things weren’t too bad. Suprisin what people toss in the garbage. A fella can scrounge a lot that way. But I got caught eventually. Been at social services ever since; neighbors turned me in I guess. Doesn't matter much, one place is pretty much like another for a kid like me.

            After about a year DCS found my Uncle Murph. He wasn't much interested in his brother’s brat I guess. Took six months before he’d agreed to take me anyway. I was here under temporary custody - sorta like gettin something on approval - you can take it back anytime. Caseworker told me I'd better be good. She said Uncle Murph had had to be convinced to let me come even for a trial stay.

            Anyway there I was, piss stained pants, looking up at those big arms of his and shakin in my shoes wonderin how hard he could hit. Maybe a lot harder'n than mom.

            "OK young fellow, looks like you could use some dry trousers. Why don't you head in to the stable with Aunt Alice, while I rustle your gear out of the truck.

"Murph you ol fraud, you’re as much a cowboy as I'm an elephant." Aunt Alice laughed as she headed for the house.

I beat a hasty retreat after her, following her into the big old weather beaten Montana ranch house. Inside it was clean and neat with a big living room with a huge stone fireplace and an apparatus of elk horns wired together with electric bulbs for a chandelier in the middle of the room. Big old stuffed chairs and couches were spread around, reading lights and tables nearby, bookcases lining the walls, and a bearskin rug in front of the fireplace. It had a comfortable used look about it. Following my Aunt upstairs she pointed out a bedroom right off the top of the stairs, and indicated that their room was at the end of the hall. Entering, I could see bunk beds, a desk, and bureau. A breeze made the curtains flap around the open window from which I could see the hills nestling in around the old ranch house and the small stream at their foot a couple of hundred yards away. On the wall were scattered some old black and whites of various people - relatives I suppose, and a picture of a cowboy on a skittish horse in front of a rattlesnake. Cowboy had his pistol out and looked to be about to pot the snake. I liked it - Aunt Alice told me later that it was by a man named Remington and that the original was in some museum down in Wyoming. "Kinda there to remind our vistors to keep an eye out in the hills." I shuddered at the thought of meeting one of those snakes - gave me the creeps - it looked real mean.

            She was showing me the bathroom, which was between my room and another spare bedroom with doors leading to both, when Murph came in with my bag. I couldn't help blush when I noticed him staring at my pants again - almost like he enjoyed the sight. He grinned and said "we'll be downstairs when you've finished changing."

            Though I was relieved when they both left, I didn't change right away, instead I looked around my new room. The wet pants didn't bother me much, in fact I kinda liked the feel, and for some reason, though it was embarrasing as heck, had felt a strange, funny, almost good feeling when Uncle Murph had been looking them over. For a moment it almost felt like I was a little kid with his dad.

It was the first room I'd ever had to myself; I'd either shared with my mom or slept on a couch most of my life. Once I'd slept with one of her boy friends kids, sharing a bed with the youngest cause we both wet the bed. Often they wouldn't change the sheets neither - it had been a real stinky room. Sometimes, waking up in the night I couldn't figure out which of us was wetting. The boyfriend hadn't been too bad, and Timmy was pretty nice too, though he missed his mother a lot. Sometimes the little guy would cry in the night when he'd been teased or felt sick. I'd always give him a hug - I never minded it when he was wet. Once he'd wet right while I was hugging him, but I just held tight as the warm pee had spread out through the front of his PJ's and soaked into mine. The wet warmth spreading around my crotch and up my tummy didn’t feel all that bad. I told him that now we'd have to sleep real close cause of the wet pajamas to keep warm, and he curled his wet little body tight up against mine all night. It'd felt real good. Timmy had left a month or so later with his father and brother when mom got mean on drugs and beat Timmy. I never saw them again, but I missed Timmy a lot. He felt a bit like family, which was more'n I could say for mom.

            Anyways that was then, and this was now. First I goes over and closes the door to the room. Then I dumps my over-sized shopping bag out onto the floor. Weren’t all that much there, raggedy bits of this and that. Kids like me don’t get much, and what I got mainly come from charity. Still some of that stuff from the local church groups in McLean weren’t too bad. They musts be real rich-like folks, cause some of them clothes couldn’t been worn more’n a year or so. No toys, except a few battered Star Wars figures I’d found in the dirt outside a vacant house once. Even before I went into foster care, Mom didn’t get me much of nuthin, ceptin it came from the discount bin at GoodWill. She once shoplifted me a shirt from K-mart that was kinda nice, though a bit big for me. Otherwise I wore hand-me-downs or cast offs left in someone’s trash.

            I sifted through the pile and retrieves my stuff. There wasn’t a whole lot of it. Supply was about run out before they’d hauled me outa Old Mrs. Brown’s in McLean. I also picked out the picture I’d found of a kid about two years old with his parents. It’d been on a rack in a drug store; the cover of a pamphlet on vaccinatin little kids. He was naked, except for a pair of pouchy old-fashioned plastic pants over some really big cloth diapers. His parents each had him by the hand, and he was just hanging there between them with this big happy grin on his face. I really liked the picture: I’d look at it and imagine it was me with my parents. Looking around the room, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of a hiding place for it or my stuff. The bureau stood up off the floor too much to hide anything under it, and the closet was a bare box except for a clothes bar. So I put the picture and my stuff under the mattress of the lower bunk bed. Not much of a chance anyone would find it there. Wasn’t likely anyone was gonna make my bed for me. Certainly not the Murphy’s seein as how glad Uncle Murph was to see me and all.

            After finding a hiding place, I decided it was time to change. I kicks through the pile of clothes till I find something that looks passable. Old Mrs. Brown didn’t see much purpose to washing her foster brats’ stuff, so mine mostly stayed on the floor where I threw it. Once in a while, when it smelled too bad, I’d go down to the basement and throw it in the machine with whatever soap there was. Anyways, I found a pair of sweats and a T-shirt that didn’t look too bad and put them on. Didn’t have no underwear. Never really fancied puttin on a pair of shorts with another kids skid marks on them. Dressed, I headed off to explore.

 

I was goin down the hallway towards the Murphy’s room when this hand lands real hard on my shoulder and I’m spun around. There’s Uncle Murph, his face red as a beet. He’s shaking a bit too. ‘This is going be where I find out how hard he can hit,’ I thinks.

            “Where do you think you’re going kid?”

            “I- I- I was just looking around?” I says real quiet like. One thing I larned from mom is to not answer back nor nuthin cause it’ll just make the beatin worse.

            “Listen kid – you never go anywhere around here without asking first! Never! And our room is strictly off limits – Understand!’

            Glaring at me, with his hand squeezing down on my shoulder, it scared me. “N- no, no sir, I’ll stay away from your room. No problem.”

            “Right, and you don’t go anywhere without permission. Not outside. Not to the barn. Not into the hills. Not down to the stream. You understand.”

            “Yes sir!” I answer as convincingly as I could.

            “OK then, kid, lets go down and see what your Aunt has for us for chow.” His hand relaxed and he turns me towards the stairs.

I headed off, real relieved to still be in one piece, and Uncle Murph followed me down to the kitchen. There I found a welcoming smile from Aunt Alice, which made me feel a little better.

            “Welcome to the Little Wrangler Ranch, Timmy. You just sit down there at the table and I’ll rustle you up a little grub.”

            She was be-in a bit corny. I could see that from the way she grinned at Uncle Murph. He sorta looks at me with a little bit of a sour face, but shrugs and sits down. “I caught him upstairs trying to get into our room.”

            “Oh-dear. Timmy you have to realize that it is quite difficult for a pair of folks like us to have a strange boy arrive so suddenly in our lives. Well -, we’re used to our privacy and all that, and we think things would just go a lot better if we had our own little private spaces. I’m afraid that there are several places you just can’t go around here. Another one is the laundry. That’s my little private place. You are also to stay out of Murph’s office where he has his computer. I hope you understand dear?”

            I allowed as how I did - not that it mattered much. With my own room and all, and the rest of the house, it looked like things would be fine. Kinda wondered what I’d do when I needed to wash my clothes, but I’d never lived in a place this big anyway, and a few rooms I couldn’t go into didn’t matter much. Leastways, I didn’t want to see how hard Uncle Murph could hit with those big arms of his and all. A kid like me, he learns fast not to cross a guy like Uncle Murph. Where I comes from, you could find yourself visitin the hospital real quick.

            “Good, I know that we’re all going to be great friends.” She gives Uncle Murph a look, and he just gives a little sigh, and nods his head to me. I think I can relax a bit, seeing as how the red has gone out of his face.

            Dinner was real good. I mean real good. Like all I could eat. And not just macaroni, or hotdogs, or cereal - like I usually gets. They had a big pot roast, potatoes, and beans. They lets me have all the seconds I wanted too – though they makes me eat all my vegetables. Never had to bother with them much at Mrs. Brown’s or with Mom. Ketchup was the only vegetable I ever ate regular. After that there was an apple pie. “Ala’mode” Aunt Alice said – which means with ice cream. Never had a homemade pie before. Crust was flaky and it was still warm from the oven.

            “Way that boy eats,” Uncle Murph growled, “looks like he was starved on that airplane out here. When was the last time anyone fed you youngster?”

            Aunt Alice, she looks at me kinda apraisin like. “Well given the size of him, it couldn’t been all that much even before he got on the airplane.”

            It was true, I was small for my age. Smallest kid in the class most of the time – when I went to school. Speaking of school, they started in quizzin me about all that as soon as dinner was over. So I told them that long as Mom was around, I didn’t do much school. She rarely bothered to get me there, once I could take care of myself that is, so I only got a little bit of second grade. Most of the time, I’d sit home watchin TV. The kids at the school always made fun of me anyhow since I usually didn’t have much to wear - and as sometimes I wet my pants (didn’t tell em that part). While I was in foster care, I had to go regular. Mrs. Brown, she wanted us brats out of the house as fast and as long as the school would take us. I stayed for soccer after school. Bout the only thing I was good at there. Most of the time, as long as you didn’t give no trouble - hit a teacher and all, they just passes you up. I was going into the 5^th grade I told em.

            Well the Murphy’s, they wanted to know how well I read and counted. They made me uncomfortable-like, pushin on the subject. I says fine enough to get into 5^th grade. But they won’t leave it. Aunt Alice, she asks me some math problems, but I just looks at her. Might as well been Greek she was speakin. I can count change an all that, and I know how to make sure the guy at the store don’t cheat me an all, but she wanted me to do hard stuff like multiplication and division. No way! Uncle Murph, he finally got up and gets a book and brings it over, puts it in front of me, and says, “OK, why don’t you read us a bit of this.”

I just stares at him, “What do you think I am – stupid or something.” I tries to hide it, but they can see I’m sorta cryin. I knows I can’t read much, but that’s my business – not theirs.

“OK, but why don’t you just show us how much you can do.”

I just shove the book away.

“You can’t read at all, can you?” Uncle Murph says.

I just don’t answer none.

“Well, it looks like we have our work cut out for us,” he sighs to Aunt Alice, “Schools may be three months away, but this little cowboy is gonna have to stay off the range for a while and do some schoolwork.”

Can’t say this looked very promising. And for the most part it wasn’t.

 

That night they sent me up to bed while they did the dishes. After a while Aunt Alice comes up to my room. “All ready for bed Timmy?”

‘Yah,’ I think, ‘like she can’t see I’m already in bed?’

“Have you brushed your teeth dear?”

I just look at her. I think she knows I don’t even own a toothbrush.

“Well,” she can see the answer from my expression, “You just hop up and get into the bathroom. You’ll find a brand new toothbrush waiting for you there, and while you’re at it, why don’t you jump into the bathtub and get a little of that grime off you. Wouldn’t hurt any to wash off a little - given your little problem this afternoon either.

I blushed a bit when she said that, but as I wasn’t wearin nuthin under the covers, I told her she had to leave the room if I had to get out of bed.

She just laughed, “Do you think the sight of a naked little boy is going to make me pass out? Out you come young man. And she whips the covers off me – just like that! Wasn’t expectin that. I must of turned three shades of red. I ran into the bathroom lickety split, but she follows me there, makes sure I’m brushin real hard and turns on the water in the tub. After I finish, she makes me get in. It was wonderful warm I have to admit. And though it really embarassed me, I did let her scrub my back – and my front. After she was done, she lets me soak a bit. It was kinda nice.

“Don’t you have any pajamas Timmy?”

Heck, I was lucky I had pants and my raggedy old sneakers to wear.

“Well, I’ll go and look at the things the church sent over last week. I think there might be something in there. After a while she comes back in. Darned if she didn’t have a little kid’s sleeper big enough to fit me. I mean, yah, a few kids my age wear those things, but I’d a got laughed outa the house if I’d tried to put those on at old Mrs. Brown’s.

I turned a bit crimson, when she dried me off – all over, and then more or less put them on me. But they was pretty comfy. I liked them.

“Now you look pretty cozy,” she said, “You know it gets pretty cold up here at night so close to the mountains and all.” She took me by the hand and had me climb into bed. Pulling the sheets up to my chin, she bent over and gave me a real gentle kiss on my forehead. No one had ever done that before. Lyin there, in a sleeper, tucked-in, with a good night kiss. It was a strange feeling. She left the door to my room open a crack. As she slipped out I heard her whisper “Goodnight Timmy. Sweet dreams and sweet repose – and keep those toes tucked under the bed clothes.”

 

Chapter 2 Settlin In

Life wasn’t too bad at the Murphy’s. Uncle Murph, he was retired, though he worked at something called ‘consulting. Seems he was something called ‘a geologist’ and once worked for some big oil company. Anyway he’d quit that and found some oil for himself. Not a lot anyways, but enough that he and Aunt Alice was real comfortable-like. That’s how they’d bought the ranch in the foothills of the Bear Tooth Mountains, and how they was able to afford a hired man.

            Would you believe his name was Gus? I mean really. Gus? You gotta be kiddin. No one names their kid Gus. Anyways, he was named Gus, and he ran a small herd of cattle with Uncle Murph. Seems it was a bit of a hobby for both, but it made the place more like a work’n ranch. He also handled the other stock around the place. They had a milk cow and chickens, a few sheep and some pigs. Seems they liked the idea of raising their own food. Even had a vegetable patch and some fruit trees down near the stream where it was easy to irrigate.

Gus didn’t seem anymore overjoyed to have me around than Uncle Murph. He had a small house on the place, and a fenced in yard. The fence looked new-like, and you couldn’t see over it. I had a feelin it had been constructed special recently – as Gus’s house and yard were also strictly off limits to me too.

Aunt Alice, she says “A boy’s gotta have chores to do or he will just go to ruin.” So Gus, takes me around the place and gives me all the dirty work. I gotta go out and get the eggs everyday. Them hens is mean too, likes to peck my eyes out if they could get to em. Barely a day I don’t get nipped by one of them. Had to clean the chicken house regular as well. Pheww! That chicken crap is hot stuff (Gus says I gotta call it ‘manure’ – but it sure smells like ----). I have to feed all the animals and help herd them around the place too. That warn’t so bad once I realized that you did that riding a horse.

            Course the first time Murph and Gus put me up on a horse, – they didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it neither - I got so scared I pissed my pants again. I thought they’d get real mad-like, me wettin all over that saddle and all, but Murph, he just lifts me down off the pony, and gives me a pat on the fanny and tells me to run in and get changed. Somehow, I got that funny feelin again that he liked seeing me wet like that. They both seemed real interested-like. In any case, they was a bit friendlier when I returned wearin a pair of the jeans the Murphys had gotten for me from their church ladies. I got hoisted up on that horse, and after being walked around a bit, I was showed how to hold the reins, how to give the horse a little kick to get it started, and most important: how to pull back on the reins so the thing stops. After that, Gus takes me for an easy ride around the farmyard, and off up into the hills a short distance. It didn’t take me long to learn how to help him shoo the stock into their pen at night. He did the real riding. I mostly just walked my horse along, and the stock kinda followed me in as I led the way on Billy (my ponies name).

            Most days, Murph spent a lot of time in that office of his, doin his ‘consulting. Seems like he got paid to give people advice on how to find oil. Sometimes he’d take off for a few days visiting some place where they were looking for the stuff. Most of the time though he was home. He sure didn’t seem to want me hanging around much, and he’d often go up to that room of his and just shut the door – stayin in there sometimes for hours. Otherwise, he’d go off on the ranch somewhere with Gus, or up the stream fishin.

            Aunt Alice, she spends the most time with me. When I’m not out doin chores, I’m inside helping her with the dishes, or doing math. She’d bustle around the kitchen cooking or doing whatever, and throw them math problems at me. Wasn’t too bad. I guess I got a head for numbers after all. She drills away at me with multiplication tables. Says there isn’t a boy in the county my age doesn’t know em by heart. Wasn’t too long for I could handle most of them, and she works me on doing sums and stuff on paper as well. I kinda liked it, sittin there, her baking cookies or a pie, and having me recite. Never had no one pay that much attention to me before – and them cookies was pretty good too. She did all the cleaning and washing herself though: said that boys should work outside and help the men.

She did give me a horrid scare though. The first morning I was there, I came in from Gus showing me how to do the chores – and she told me she’d made my bed! Man! – that frightened me. What if she’d found my stuff. I rushed up to my room, and slipped my hand way under the mattress on my bunk. There it was, just about where I thought it should be. Later, I bundled it up under my shirt, and got it out of the house when no one was looking. Found a good place for it up in the hay loft.

            Nights, after dinner, Uncle Murph’d try and teach me to read. Didn’t take to that much. Not at all. He had this little kid’s reader and all. He’d make me sit on this couch next to him while Aunt Alice sewed, and shove it under my nose. Try and make me sound out the letters. I felt dumb. It made me feel like a stupid little kid when he did that. I hated it, and I’d resist. Finally, he’d end up yellin, and Aunt Alice, she’d shush him, and after a while he’d give up in disgust. I didn’t see Aunt Alice ever get mad much, but she didn’t like it when he called me ‘stupid’. I guess she thought I might believe it – maybe I did and she could see that. Anyway, Uncle Murph never did that again. But we sure didn’t make no progress anyways.

            Well, one night, Uncle Murph, he finally slams the book down on the table in front of the couch and just glares at me: “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to learn to read?”

            “No!” I says.

            “But lookit kid, if you can’t read, how do you expect to ever go anywhere in the world? No one can get a decent job without being able to read.”

            “Don’t know – don’t care, I’ll be a cowboy like Gus.”

            “Look Timmy (I was surprised, he almost always just called me ‘boy’), you have to learn to read. Besides, books are fun, if only you’d learn - you’d really love it.”

            “Books are booooring.” I sneered, “Nobody reads books these days, TV and movies is much better.”

            “Well, I don’t see no TV set around here. You’re gonna get pretty bored this winter without being able to read any books once the snows set in and you’re cooped up in here all day.”

            “Won’t miss much – I think.”

            “I sure hope you enjoy going to school with the little kids, then, boy!”

            “What d’ya mean?’

            ‘If you can’t read you sure aren’t goin into fifth grade with the other ten year olds, that’s for sure.”

            “Yah! Right! Like they’re gonna keep you back just for that. I can’t read none, nor could a lot of other kids I know, but in my school they just pass ya up each year – no trouble – long as you shows up mosta the time and don’t give em a hard time.”

            “Not here Timmy. George Wilers kid Scotty came out here 3 years ago after his mother died. Scotty lived in Chicago and was in 4^th grade there. He couldn’t read like you, and they put him right back in first grade with all the little kids.”

            “Sure – thing!” I didn’t believe a word of that guff.

            Finally, he looks at me funny like, then he gets up and goes to the book case across the room, reaches up high, and takes down a package that’s sitting up on the top shelf. He brings it over and sits down on the couch next to me. “Aunt Alice got this. It’s a new book, so I’ve never read it before, but I’ll bet you’ll find you like it. So listen.”

            I pretends not to hear. For a while I just looks at my feet, then across the room. For a while I pointedly study the very excitin water stain on the plaster near the window.

            “Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone” he began. After a while, he’d read two chapters.

            “Well?” I says.

            ‘Well what?” he says.

            “Well – aren’t you gonna read some more?”

            “I thought you said books was booooring?”

            I just scowled at him. I could see both him and Aunt Alice was amused.

            “Time for bed Timmy.” Aunt Alice smiled, and I could tell she was pleased at something, but didn’t say what. She comes over and takes my hand and gives me a little pull up off the couch. She follows me upstairs and gives me a bath again. She does that at least -four times a week, and I guess I kinda like her doin it. Funny for a big kid like me. I mean I can wash myself and all – if you lets me. Still, it felt good, though she always made me blush a bit when she washes my front. I mean, does she have to wash a fellas front – all of it. Oh-well. Besides, it was nice being tucked in and all.

            The next night after dinner, Murph just gets down that Harry Potter book and starts reading. I look at Aunt Alice who gives me that funny little look, and a ‘well – well,’ sort of grin. I try to look like ‘this don’t matter much to me’ and slump down next to Murph, giving a sorta dramatic pained kind of sigh. She just smiles some more. I look a bit sheepish. After a while, I kind of lean a bit against Uncle Murph while he reads. I was a bit sleepy and all. I could feel him stiffen. So I starts to pull away, but then I feel him relax. He puts his arm around me, so I stays there. Kinda feels good. He reads away.

 

I wake up in bed. I guess I musta drifted off, and Uncle Murph musta carried me upstairs. Anyways, it’s morning – and my bed is soaked. ‘Oh-no!’ I think, and jump out. Now I’d done this before now and then, well maybe once a week, at Old Mrs. Brown’s. If she’d found out - she’d yell a bit sometimes, but most of the time, she just let it be. A lot of us boys did that there. She’d make us wash the sheets when they got too smelly, and that was that. All the mattresses had plastic covers, so no real damage was done. But I was worried what the Murphys might do. The laundry was locked, so I couldn’t wash the sheets – and Aunt Alice, she cleaned my room most every day, top to bottom. So hidin em was no good neither. So, for a change, I just made my bed. Didn’t look quite as neat as Aunt Alice made it – but passable I thought.

            I don’t know, I hadn’t wet in all the three weeks I’d been at the Murphy’s. Kinda a personal record for me, I guess. Someone told me once that kids who wet are strong sleepers and just don’t wake up when they need to. I guess most of the time, till now, I’d been sleeping pretty light at the Murphys, what with that big old spooky house creakin all night with the wind, and the critters around the place. Those coyotes were really scary when they came around, howling and all that. I guess Uncle Murph musta really knocked me out with that reading of his.

            After breakfast, I was doing chores with Gus, when Aunt Alice comes and gets me. She looks cross too. She drags me up the stairs to my room, and there I can see my wet sheets piled on the floor. “Timmy, don’t ever make a bed with wet sheets again! Why on earth would you do such a thing?”

            I looked at her kinda scared like, “I- I- I was afraid what you and Uncle Murph’d get mad.”

            “Well, you don’t have to worry about me. I wet my bed till I was considerably older than you cowboy.” It was Uncle Murph standing at the door looking at me and my wet sheets there on the floor. He grinned at me, and glances over at Aunt Alice. “It’s OK, Aunt Alice is just mad cause she doesn’t want you to sleep on wet sheets or hide something like this from her.”

            Aunt Alice seemed to relent at this, and she just leans over and gives me a little shake and a hug, “Timmy, from now on when this happens you come get me – hear! Murph’s right, I don’t want you sleeping on wet sheets. You could make yourself sick. Don’t be embarrassed, boys do this all the time you know.” She was look’n at Uncle Murph when she said this, and he seemed sorta embarrassed for some reason.

            Well, Uncle Murph, he reads to me every night, and I suppose it’s a good thing that a plastic sheet appeared on my bed cause that wasn’t the last wet bed I had in that house. Not by a long shot.

            Turns out that Murph was pretty sneaky. That Harry Potter book was a trap. When he finished it, he put it down and said, “Well that’s it.”

            “Whatd’ya mean!” I said. I knew that there were at least two more Harry Potter books by now, and that they were gonna publish another one someday too.

            “What I mean is -,” and he pulled a new Harry Potter out from under the cushion on the couch, “is that you have to read the next one by yourself.”

            “No fair! Sides – I can’t read no-how.”

            “Well, I think you’re just going to have to learn – aren’t you?”

            We made a deal. If I worked my way through the first page of each chapter with him, then he’d read the rest to me. After that, I guess, I kinda did learn to like it. I mean it was nice being next to him on that couch. He’d put his arm around my shoulders after a while, and I’d kinda lean into him. Aunt Alice always seemed to give us this little smug smile while she watched. Sometimes he’d notice and kinda look sheepish and take his arm away – making a scowl-like at me. After a while, I’d get into my sleeper before we read most nights, as it seemed regular that he’d wind up carrying me off to bed.

 

Well, my stuff didn’t last too long at the Murphy’s. Didn’t take more’n a few weeks, and my little supply in the barn was gone. No way to get more out there on the ranch, and even if I did have some money, which I didn’t, Aunt Alice would keep me under her wing real tight when she took me into Red Lodge to do the shopping. I could look at stuff on the shelves as we passed by, but it might as well have been sitting on the moon for all it mattered.

            So – desperate, I made do. I found an old pair of diaper pins with little blue teddy bears on them in a junk drawer in the kitchen one day when Aunt Alice sent me looking for some rubber bands. I slipped them into my pocket. With these and one of Aunt Alice’s big old fluffy white towels in my bathroom I could make a pretty passable diaper. Weren’t the same as them cute little Pampers that I’d see at the store. The new size six looked like it would fit me too! But, I’d hide myself in my bedroom, pin a towel on, and look at the picture of the two year old in his pouchy plastic pants, and pretend I was him. After a while, I figured out that if you cut the corners off a plastic bag, you could make a fair imitation plastic pants. Leaked sometimes, as I soon found out experiment’n, but nice just the same. I’d put on one of the towels for a diaper, and then I’d get into bed and sleep with it on all night. Sometimes, I’d wet it, putting on one of my plastic bag covers. I loved the feelin of being in bed with that big wet cloth all around me – even better’n the GoodNites I had snuck with me from Old Mrs. Brown’s. One thing bed wettin’s good for is covering up the occasional leakage from a pair of home-made plastic pants. Best cover a diaper boy like me could hope for.

In the mornings, after using my ‘diapers’, I’d make sure I got into the bathroom before Aunt Alice and Uncle Murph were up. I’d take off the plastic cover and shred it so no one could guess what it had been used for. I’d bunch it up and put it into my jeans pocket, and then sneak it into the garbage can in the kitchen. Then I’d get into the bathtub and fill it with water, sitting in my pinned up diaper feeling the warmth slowly soaking up into the cloth. I’d let the tub fill to my chin. Kinda like a baby in his mothers tummy I thought as I would float there suspended. After a while, when the water cooled, I would take the towel off in the tub, and carefully rinse it out a few times. When I got out, I would be careful to drop the towel back into the draining tub, as though it had accidentally fallen off the towel wrack. Life wasn’t all bad.

 

Gus. He rarely had much to say to me, even when we did our chores together. My Aunt and Uncle would get him to take me riding with him up into the hills. Said I needed the practice. He was always kinda grouchy about this, but once we were on our way, he’d start talking. He’d tell me stories about Montana in the old days. He’d tell me about the snakes, and the lizards and all the other critters. He had some great old hunting stories too. Mostly though, he’d talk about the mountains, and all the people who’d lived in them: the trappers, the cowboys, the miners. It turned out he loved to talk, and didn’t mind the audience once he started. One day, however, as we was riding across a little meadow in the hills, he says “Time for you to learn how to gallop” – and he just charges off on that big horse of his. Well Billy just bolts after him, with me hangin on for dear life. Legs flying every which way, and me bouncing up and down in the saddle like a beach ball. I was scared witless. He pulls up on the other side of the meadow, and my pony gallops over to where he is and comes to a halt.

            Gus grinned over at me “Well, looks like you did pretty good – leastways, you didn’t fall off. Next time you gotta grip with your knees tight.” Then he sees that I’ve wet my pants. “Well little cowboy, looks like you sprung a leak.” He smiles at me. “Hmmm – seems to me maybe I oughta call you ‘squirt’ stead- a cowboy.’ Lets go Squirt.”

With that he trotted off chuckling, with me following red-faced behind him as he chuckled at his own joke down the trail. As we rode along, my pants dried out, but I could see him glancin down at my waist pretty regular. It wasn’t more’n a day latter that to my surprise Gus himself asked me if I’d like to go for another ride. I said sure, and he arranged for Aunt Alice to pack a lunch for us, and we headed back up into the hills. After a long ride, he pulls up at the top of a low rise at the foot of the Bear Tooths. There’s a good view of the Stillwater River and the deep canyon where it flows out of the mountains. While he pickets the horses, I unpack the lunch under a tree. There’s sandwiches of course, and some of Aunt Alice’s brownies, as well as apples and a huge bottle of soda pop. We sits on the straw brown mid-summer grass under the tree and look out at the mountains. He tells stories, and drinks his thermos of coffee as we eat our lunch, lett’n me drink the soda. It was hot. July was just around the corner, and somehow I finished that large bottle of pop all by myself.

            After a while, he finishes his tales, and gets his horse and Billy off their pickets, and we head back. Not long before we gets to a meadow; he looks at me and just grins. And then I’m off across that meadow again, arms and legs flyin, trying as best I can to squeeze my knees around that ponies middle followin Gus. When I come up to him waiting on the other side, I can see him grinning – and looking expectantly at my pants. I guess I didn’t disappoint him none. I can smell a setup when I sees one anyway. After that, I didn’t bother about waiting for the soda. The next time we went out, after we’d riding a bit, I just said “Gus”, and when he looked at me, I wet my pants for him. That got a big quiet smile and a nod from him – it was the start of a regular routine. Once or twice a week or so he’d ask me to go riding, he’d always have a large bottle of soda for me, and I’d always wet my pants for him. Don’t know why my saddle didn’t start to smell – I guess he must of cleaned it regular. Anyway, he liked it, and I guess I did too. He was much friendlier to me around the ranch after that.

 

Chapter 3 Getting to Know the Neighborhood

            I’d arrived in early June, and by now it was early July. Things was goin along OK. I mean Uncle Murph wasn’t too bad and all, exceptin he didn’t pay me much notice other than when he was reading to me. Despite that, he didn’t seem to want much to do with me. Once in a while he’d take off up the stream fishing, but I was never invited, and about the only trips away from the ranch I had was with Aunt Alice shopping in Red Lodge. That wasn’t much as she never much let me outa her sight, though she always included some sort of treat for me; usually candy or some Star Wars figure. I only got that cause I had a fit about getting a haircut. I just never had much of one. Mom didn’t bother. Old Mrs Brown could-a-cared less except when the social workers came round – then she’d drag us off to her porch and hack up our hair with some old dog clippers she had. She wasn’t about to waste money on a barber. The effect warn’t much, but she thought it made us look neat enough for the home inspections by DCS.

Anyways, Aunt Alice couldn’t get me to go near a barbershop. I absolutely refused – no way anyone was going to shave my head. I simply grabbed a lamppost and held on. She gave up and drove me home. Next time I went into town, she took me by the WalMart, and just happened to go down the aisle with all the star wars stuff on it. Never had much toys, except the broken stuff they had around my foster home. Mostly discards local stores couldn’t sell that they gave us DCS kids at the annual children’s Christmas party at the Elks. Anyways, as I was walking along I saw this cool X-wing fighter sitting on the shelf. So I stopped to look for a bit. Took it down and held it up pretending I was strafing the figures on the shelf. Then put it back afor anyone saw me playing with it and caught up to Aunt Alice.

            She looked at me as we went down the next aisle, “Do you like those Star Wars toys Timmy?”

            “Yah. But it’s awfully expensive. They never gives stuff like that to us foster kids. One kid, he brought some of it with him from home when he came to old Mrs. Brown’s, but he wouldn’t share it none.”

            “Well, I’ll tell you what; you’ve been doing a pretty good job of your chores, and I think you deserve a reward. If you agree to get a haircut today, well then, I guess maybe we could come back here and get you that space ship you were playing with.”

            Temptation can lead a man to do awful things. I agreed. But getting into that barber chair scared me something awful. Next thing you knows, they’re going to take me to a dentist. That’d only hurt, but a haircut could ruin a kid’s whole life. The man in the shop though, he recognizes Aunt Alice, and evidently has even heard about me. Seems he cuts Uncle Murph’s hair regular. We get in there, and I watch em cutting this old dudes hair – he’s got clippers and is going all over his head. Just what I was afraid of – maybe he does a little better job than old Mrs. Brown, but I’m glad school is still a long way off so’s I can let it grow back in. It’s finally my turn and I’m about to hop up and all, when he holds me off. He goes in back of the shop and brings back a kiddy seat, which he puts, in the chair. That does it. Enough is enough. I start to head out of the shop, but Aunt Alice she grabs my arm and she just looks at me. Darn! Didn’t look like she was going take me leaving sitting down. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be sitting down for a while neither if I left.

            So I gets up in that barber chair, and he puts this big white sheet around me and tucks in some sort of tissue thing around my neck.

            “Well young cowboy – how do you want it cut? We seem to have a lot to work with here?”

            I looked at Aunt Alice – she just shrugged and smiled. “It’s up to you Timmy.”

I looked at him sorta surprised and all. Never had no-one ask me how I wanted my hair cut before. I looked at Aunt Alice, “You mean I can have any haircut I want?”

She just nodded.

Well, not a bad deal – the guy shows me about 16 different styles and all. So I got this rad punk haircut, and the guy in the shop, he gives me this jell stuff so I can keep it stickin up. Aunt Alice liked it too since it was pretty short. She said it was real cute. That made me blush a bit. Anyways, I got the X-Wing fighter.

So we’re walking back to the Aunt Alice’s car and we bump into some friends of Aunt Alice’s. Man’s name is Mel Petersen, and he has his daughter Sally with him. Apparently they live on a ranch near ours, and he makes his living guiding rich folks he calls ‘dudes’ fishing and hunting. His wife sews designer clothes, and seems they make a pretty good living, what with all the rich folks moving out here from Hollywood and L.A. Anyways, Aunt Alice, she introduces him and Sally, and then they set to talking and gossiping for a bit. Sally she looks me over good, and I stare back. She’s skinny, got brown hair and freckles, and what they calls ‘dimples’ on her cheeks. I think she fashions herself some kinda tom boy cause she wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a plain old white T-shirt. Anyway, first thing she says is that she’s got her own pony, and that her dad lets her ride anywhere, and that she’s going to be in the kids’ calf roping contest at the Red Lodge Rodeo. I can see she’s pretty full of herself, but don’t matter much to me. I asks her how old she is, and she says ten.

“I’m ten too - last December. You gonna be in 5^th grade like me?”

“Sure. Say that’s a pretty nice haircut you got.”

Maybe she’s all right, I thinks, but I don’t get anymore chance to talk to her as Aunt Alice is finished talking to Mr. Petersen and drags me off to her car in a hurry to get back and fix dinner. On the way home Aunt Alice chats with me a bit, and I show her all the cool stuff on the X-Wing fighter. Can you believe she’d never seen Star Wars? So I tells her all about it, and how Luke saves Princess Leiya, and how Darth Vader destroys her home. Anyway, I’m jabbering away, and Aunt Alice kinda cuts in.

“Did you like Sally, Timmy?”

“Yah – she looked all right – for a girl. I’m older’n her though, and I think she wants to be a Tom Boy or something.”

“Well, its certain that she doesn’t wear many dresses, but it’s just a phase, I’m sure she’ll grow out of. Did she say what grade she was going to be in?”

“Fifth, just like me, so I guess we’ll be in class together.”

“Well – Timmy I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

“Come on, there can’t be more’n one fifth grade class in Red Lodge Aunt Alice.”

“You might not be in fifth grade Timmy. You’re pretty far behind Sally and the rest of the kids her age here. If you stay till the school year, you might find yourself in a lower grade dear.”

I can’t say I believed her, but it made me nervous and all – particularly after what Uncle Murph had said to me earlier. What if they really did put you back here just because you couldn’t read well?

What really had me worried though, was what she’d said about school in the fall: “IF you stay.” “Aunt Alice?”

‘Yes dear?”

“Aint I gonna stay here? I mean, you aint gonna send me back to DC are you?”

“Timmy – we’ll just have to see.”

“P- P- Please! Aunt Alice.”

“Let it rest dear. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

I was so upset I was in tears. Neither of us said a word all the way home. When I looked over at Aunt Alice, though, I thought she kinda looked like she was gonna cry too. At least her eyes looked kinda teary.

 

That night, after I’m in bed and all, and the Murphy’s are asleep, I get woken up by a tremendous boom. It seems like the whole house is shakin. There’s another boom out the window and a huge flash of light. Thunder and lightning are all around the house and each new crack and slam, each flash of light terrifies me. I can’t stand it. I sit there and shake for a while, but it seems like any moment lightening will come right into the room.

Crack! It seemed like the whole room was blowin up.

I was so scared I didn’t even realize that I’d wet myself. Finally, I bolts out of bed and the room. I got to get away. I look around, I can see lightning flashing through all the windows downstairs, so I runs to Aunt Alice’s and Uncle Murph’s room. The doors locked, but I bang on it anyway. No-one answers. I’m so scared I just huddle up against the door shakin with fear – pissing myself with every new bang and crack of thunder.

 

Alice Murphy was lying half asleep in bed. The lightning didn’t always wake her after all these years, but when it did, she loved to look at it dancing out over the foothills of the Bear Tooths and striking down at the mountains. It was like watching the Gods frolic. She was half listening to the mid-July thunderstorm, half asleep, when she heard a noise at the door.

“Murph! Murph! Wake up. I think Timmy’s trying to get into the room.”

Murph woke with a start. “What!” He bolted from bed, and grabbing a robe from a chair to cover himself, snatched his belt from the chair. Before his wife could calm him, he jerked open the door and raised his belt up over his head prepared to strike at the nosey little brat.

Hand in the air he looked down. There, lying in the hallway was the boy. Whimpering, lying in a puddle. He could see him shaking with fear as he looked up eyes wide with terror at the upraised belt.

Murph dropped the belt, and bent over, picking the frightened little boy up in his arms.

“My God Alice – I almost hit him!”

“I know,” she said, “– but would it have been him you were hitting?”

She looked into his eyes, and he hung his head. He knew what she meant. Timmy wasn’t the demon that frightened him so much, or made him so angry. He carried the boy down the hall to his room and set him on the bed. Alice came over and unzipped the wet sleeper, and pulled the boy out of it. Murph cuddled the shivering youngster and held him while Alice stripped the bed and remade it. He sat there, long after Alice had gone, holding the boy tight until the thunders went away and the boy fell asleep in his arms.

 

I woke up in the morning with the sun streaming into my room. Out the window I could see a few tall thunderheads floating in the distance, the only reminder of my terror. The bed was dry, and I lay there, warm and naked under the blankets thinking about last night. Uncle Murph had puzzled me. I thought sure he was gonna wail on me with that belt of his. Instead, he’d picked me up and carried me down the hall to put me to bed. I remembered slipping off to sleep in his arms. They’d been so strong and tight around me. I couldn’t make him out none. One minute he wanted nothing to do with me – the next it was like I was his long lost son.

When I went downstairs for breakfast, I found Uncle Murph sitting at the table sipping his coffee. Normally when I came in, he’d ignore me like I didn’t exist, hiding in that paper of his. If I made a noise, he’d drop his paper a bit and scowl. But today, as soon as I came in, he puts the paper down and smiles, “Good morning cowboy.” I smiled back, kinda shyly, not sure how to react an all. As soon as I sits down Aunt Alice bustles over with a big pile of buttermilk pancakes, sausage and that maple syrup she and Uncle Murph like so much. Kinda tastes strange to me – I mean its not like real Log Cabin or Aunt Jemina or nuthin. But, I’m getting used to it. Anyways, it’s a great breakfast, so both Uncle Murph and I tuck-in while Aunt Alice, she gets the coffee pot and joins us.

After a while Uncle Murph looks at me, and grins, “You know, after a good thunder storm, them trout in the creek will be all riled up and hungry as bears. What do you say we go chase after them today.”

You coulda knocked me over with a feather. I just says, “I never been fishin before.”

“No problem, sport, I think the Ol’Man can teach you a thing or two.”

Anyways, he gets out something he calls a fly rod, and hauls me down to the creek. Taking the rod in his hands, he casts back and forth a couple of times, letting out a long stream of line, shooting it across the pool to settle gently on the water. There’s a little swirl and he’s got a trout he brings in stripping the line through his fingers. He lifts it up out of the water to hang in front of me. He laughs as I unsuccessfully try to grab it, and then lowers it back into the water and slides it up onto the bank. I see him gently take the little fish firmly in one hand and then work the hook from its jaws. Turning it around, he lets it wiggle back into the stream, where it shoots off and disappears.

“We’ll let that one do a little growing before we invite him home for supper.”

Murph then puts the rod in my hand, “Well, lets see you give it a try.”

I whip the rod back and forth a few times, wrapping the line around the pole, and then give a yelp as the fly firmly seats itself into the back of my trousers. Uncle Murph, he laughs some more as he works the hook out of my levi’s - me bent over an all. Then he pats me on the fanny, untangles the line, and puts the rod back into my hand. This time he holds on with me, and as we whip the rod back together, he says, “jerk – jerk – jerk, rhythm and wrist – no arm, jerk – jerk – jerk. Now just let it drop.” He works away with me like that for about an hour, till I get the hang of it. Then, he takes me up the river. We spend the day walking the stream. He shows me how to sneak along behind the brush. How to drop my fly down on the water above an undercut bank and dabble it across like a bug dancing on the water. I gets a few fish to strike, but It seems I jerk a little too fast or a little too hard each time the water boils, and the fly yanks outa their mouths. Uncle Murph, he takes a turn, and each time he casts, it’s like a miracle as the line stretches out across the water – floating down, scarcely a ripple. It seems like he never misses. There’s a splash, then a jerk, then the tip of the rod bouncing up and down. He hands the rod to me and coaches me on bringing it in. Doesn’t seem to care that I loose most of the fish, and at the end of the day carries me back down the stream most of the ways on his shoulders with a nice string of fish for supper.

The next morning I wake up in a flood. I’d been exhausted when we came in, and had eaten supper in something of a daze from the events of the day, my head awhirl. I don’t remember eating desert. Maybe I never got that far. Anyways, I gets up and skins out of my sleeper, strips the bed and gets dressed. I go down the stairs carrying the sleeper and sheets, to be greeted by Aunt Alice sipping her coffee and waiting for me. “Looks like you slept pretty sound last night dear.” She smiles at me.

I blush a bit, even though I know she’s just teasin. “Where’s Uncle Murph?” I ask, putting the sheets in a pile by the laundry room door.

“He took off early this morning for Red Lodge, dear. Said he had a bunch of shopping he needed to do, so I guess it’s just you and me for the day.”

I felt a little let down after all the fun of the day before, but Aunt Alice showed me how to bake butterscotch brownies after breakfast. She said they was Uncle Murph’s favorite cookie. After tasting them, I allowed how they was mine too. I spent a lot of the rest of the morning her work’n me on math problems. She moved on to division. I guess I’d said those multiplication tables only about forty thousand times by now, so I knows em real good. Anyways, the division stuff was a bit tricky, but by lunch I’d mastered some of it. Uncle Murph, he come back about then, and I can see he’s got a lot of stuff in his truck. He wouldn’t let me help him carry in none of it. “None of your business.” He said. He took it all into that study of his and locked the door to it before joining us for lunch. Afterwards, he goes to work in his office. At that point, Aunt Alice suggests I go and play in my room cause she’s got some work to do too. She even suggested that I might possibly pick it up too.

So I went off reluctantly upstairs and after picking up the few bits of clothing I had left around and put my Star Wars figures in a neat row on the shelf over my desk, there wasn’t much left to do. I had a Harry Potter book, and a dictionary that Aunt Alice had given me up there too, but things looked pretty bare. I took out all my clothing and laid it on the bed so I could re-arrange my bureau. I didn’t think Aunt Alice would mind if I had it the way I liked it. Wasn’t really much there. Most of my stuff had been old when I got it. A few stained T-shirts with some holes in them, two pairs of levis with some patches Aunt Alice had put on for me, a few pairs of sweat socks, and an old windbreaker. Besides my raggedy old Tennis shoes, and what I had on, there wasn’t really much to arrange.

It was sure enough time for some new stuff. Maybe there would be a GoodWill or a thrift store in Red Lodge where I could find some if my Aunt and Uncle would give me a few bucks.

I’d just finished the rather bleak inventory of my possessions when Gus comes into the house and asks Aunt Alice if I could go riding. I could hear him all the way upstairs, and proceeded to do a one-boy stampede down the stairs. Didn’t seem like I could refuse the offer, so off we went.

Gus took me off up into the hills and we do our usual routine – besides him telling stories, and me listening, that is. Well we’re headed back in about 3 o’clock, not far from the Petersen’s Ranch, when Sally and her dad come riding down the trail headed to their place. I look down at my trousers, and decide quick-like to sort of sidle over to the other side of Gus while Sally and her father pass. No such luck, Mr. Petersen pulls up his horse in a little open space and waits for us.

“Hello there Gus, how’s things going?”

“Hello Mr. Petersen, just fine.”

“Well this must be Murph’s nephew we all have heard so much about. What’s your name son?”

Now I was just tryin to slide low in my saddle at this point, cause I could see Sally was coming round the other side. I was about to answer when I see’s her giving me a real good look-over. She gets a funny sort of look on her face, and just about then, I decide that it would be nice if a hole in the ground would just open up and swallow me.

“Guess the cats got his tongue, Mel, but sometimes, when we ain’t just saying ‘hey you’ he answers to the name of Timmy. Haven’t seen much of you this summer. Where you all been?”

“Well we just got back last week from a visit to Disneyland down by L.A. Sally here made honor role last year, so she pretty much had me over a barrel on that. While we were at it, we went up the California coast into Oregon and spent a week at the Ashland folk festival. Must have been gone near a month. Fortunately Oscar Wimer was able to look after our place now that he’s sold his own. Might even take him on permanent to help with the Dudes now that hunting season is coming on.”

Guess I coulda figured Sally as a smarty pants. She had the look.

“Gotta be going. Sarah’s waitin dinner for us. Take care now. Timmy you watch out for this old rascal – he’s full of tricks. No principles too.”

By God if he didn’t catch sight of my trousers too. He just smiles at me though, and passes on by down the trail. As Sally pulls after him she looks at me and grins. “Nice trousers there Timmy.” I’m blushing deep red by now, but I do my best to scowl as we pass. At that she breaks into a series of giggles, turns her head, and sticks out her tongue at me as she trots off down the trail.

I’m so flustered and furious, that darned if I don’t wet my pants again. If the whole thing weren’t bad enough, as we ride down the trail, I realize we’re going to get back before my pants dry. Gus looks over at me and sees this too, and I notice that he doesn’t look too happy about it. “Ahh, we gotta get back Timmy. You can probably just sneak upstairs to your room while I put the horses in the barn.

No such luck. When we arrive, there’s Uncle Murph waiting for us by the gate. He swings it open as we come in. He looks up at me with a smile as I ride by, and then notices my trousers. I can see his expression change, and I think ‘Uh-O.’ But it isn’t me he’s looking at – its Gus. And I can see by the guilty look on Gus’s face that maybe Uncle Murph has some idea of what we been up to on our rides in the hills.

Anyways, I hear him say, “Gus, why don’t you come on over to the house for a visit tonight – say about nine o’clock after Timmys in bed. He then reaches up and takes the halter of my pony and leads it into the barn. Before I can slide off, he reaches up and lifts me down. I kinda notice his hand on the crotch of my pants, and I guess he was coppin a little feel. I didn’t mind much, even when I sees him staring with a sorta funny little grin at my wet trousers. He stays and helps me brush down the pony, give it some water, feed and stable it. Workin there with him in my wet pants, know’n he could see them, but know’n he didn’t mind none – maybe even liked it a bit, made me feel good like: Like I says before: like a little boy and his dad. Course I guess I really don’t know how a kid would feel with his dad like that –probably pretty embarrassed most-wise.

After dinner that night, when I’m in bed I can hear Gus come over. There’s some scrapping of chairs in the kitchen, and after a bit, Uncle Murph’s voice gets a little loud, and then quiets down sudden like. I knew then that Aunt Alice musta been shushin him. Later I hear the screen door bang, and know that Gus’s gone home.

After that, Gus didn’t come over any more to ask me to go riding. We still does chores together, and he shows me how to take care of the tack for the horses, and how a boy should do some whittlin. Gave me a real nice pocketknife too. He’d had it for a long time. Said it was his as a boy, and he’d think a youngster like me just had to have one. Maybe he was saying thankyou, maybe he’d just takin a liking to me.

I was pretty surprised when a few days later Uncle Murph asks me if I’d like to ride with him. He takes me up into the hills and right up to the flat irons surrounding the Bear Tooths. He explains that these great big snaggy slabs of rock are know as Madison limestone; been broken up and stuck into the air when the mountains was heaved up by something called the Laramide Orogeny. We ride up a trail to one near where the Stillwater river comes out of the mountains, and pickets our horses. He takes me on a climb, showing me some real old shells in the rocks, he says is zillions of years old. Uncle Murph, he likes to tell rock stories like Gus likes cowboy stories. Only his kinda made my head spin a bit – all them big words. He looks down at me, and chuckles, “Guess I’m getting a bit ahead of you there little pardner?”

I allows as how “that’s alright, I’m learning a lot could be useful in school maybe”, and anyways its kinda interestin. I guess I just liked him talking to me, and telling me stuff. We hiked on up into the hills. Got way high up before he stops. Both of us are pretty tired, but he takes out a snack he’d brought along and a couple of big cokes to drink while we look out over the prairie below. As I gulped down the coke, I could see the Petersen’s Ranch in the distance. From there, it didn’t seem far from ours. He told me about how he’d met a cougar up there one day. Like to scare him it did, tracked him all the way down out of the mountains when he was hunting. Said he could’a shot it but he thought the big cats were too rare and beautiful to do that. “These mountains may be beautiful Timmy, but they are no place for a boy alone. Besides Cougars, there’s grizzlies that’d think you was just a fair sized snack.”

On our way back, we gets to the meadow back of our place, and he suddenly breaks into a mad gallop. Naturally my pony follows him, with me holding on and trying to not fall off. When I finally come up on him after he’d slowed, he looks over at me and grins.

“Well, well – looks like Gus was telling the truth.” He doesn’t seem too upset.

Naturally, I had wet my pants. From the look on his face I could tell it had been another set up.

Riding back to the ranch I was pretty happy. It had been a great day. By now, I didn’t mind wetting my pants around him, Aunt Alice or Gus. Seems it was just fine with them. “Boys do that sort of thing.” As Aunt Alice said. Besides, I kinda liked the attention it seemed to get me from Gus and Murph and the little boy feeling I got out of Aunt Alice.

            When we got home, Uncle Murph had me take the horses into the barn, while he went up to the house. Took me about twenty minutes to get them unsaddled, put away and the tack hung up. Pretty heavy work for a little kid like me, but I was proud of my ability to do it. Guess I’d come a long way from bein a city slicker kid.

            It was pretty dark when I came into the house through the kitchen. Aunt Alice wasn’t there, so I headed into the parlor to find her. I was yellin, “Aunt Alice - - -“

            “SURPRISE!”

            There was Aunt Alice, Uncle Murph, Gus, and the Petersens – Sally, her dad, and a woman who musta been her mother. There was also a big sign that said ‘Happy Birthday Timmy!’ and balloons and crepe paper all over the place. I could see a cake and candles and all kinds of stuff over on the dining room table.

For the moment, I didn’t even think of my wet pants, “B- but it’s not my birthday.”

            “Wrong!” Uncle Murph grins, “Seems you’re a mite younger than you think Timmy. Your mother kind of got your birth date wrong on your school records. Guess she could get you off her hands a year early that way. Your social worker sent us your birth certificate, and it says right there, that one Timothy Murphy was born on July 15^th, 1987. So happy 10^th birthday cowboy.”

            Nobody. I mean no-one. I mean nobody never. Well, I’d never had a birthday party before – that was for other kids. Kids with dads and real moms - not moms and dads like mine. I wanted to cry and I wanted to leap up in the air with joy all at once. On the other hand – that meant I was actually younger than Sally: which I thought mighta explained the smug look I saw on her face.

            There was all kinds of stuff for me. I got more Star Wars stuff from Aunt Alice, and Gus gave me a book of Montana Cowboy tales. The Petersens – they gave me cowboy boots. And they wasn’t even used. I’d never had no new shoes before – much less a pair of boots like them. They was beautiful. I was so excited I tore off my sneakers to put them on. They didn’t fit.

            Seeing my look of disappointment, Mrs Petersen smiled and said not to worry, they’d just guessed at the size, and the store was expecting me to come in and pick out the right ones.

            Then Uncle Murph, he gets a silly look on his face, goes off into his office, and comes back with all them packages he bought the other day. The tall skinny one was a fly rod, and the rest were a fishing vest, flies, lines, and all kinds of fishing stuff. “I decided that you could use this. Can’t have you borrowing mine all the time when we’re fishing.” He gives me a big grin. Boy am I excited.

            After I opened all of Uncle Murph’s presents, things get kinda quiet. I look around and I see Aunt Alice coming into the room with Aunt Sarah. They’d disappeared while Murph was showing me my new fishing reel. The two of them had another pile of presents they was carrying.

            “Time for your special presents Timmy dear.” Aunt Alice said as she set them in front of me.

            “Special presents?” I looked up at Aunt Alice, “What kind of special presents?”

            “Open them up and see dear.”

            I tore off the wrapping paper on the first one. I was kinda puzzled cause it had paper more like for a little kid. It was pastel blue with little lambs and baby rattles on it. I was shocked by what I found inside. On top of what looked like a pile of white cloth was my picture of the little boy and his parents in his pouchy plastic pants. There was also a photo – of me. I was lying on my bed, with the covers half off. And there, exposed for all the world to see were my home made plastic pants covering my towel diaper: with a very obvious wet spot on the sheet where they’d leaked. I musta turned six shades of white.

            “Finish opening your present dear.” Aunt Alice said. I was too appalled by what I’d found to even move. I wanted to die, as Aunt Alice reached in and pulled out a big white fluffy diaper hemmed in pink around the edges. There were a dozen in the box. Next came a box with little puppies playing ball. They was real pouchy old fashioned plastic pants – just like the little kid was wearing in my picture – six pairs! Then there was another small package with a dozen diaper pins with yellow duckies and blue teddy bear plastic heads. A large package with new sleepers – with snaps around the waist. Mrs. Petersen handed me one wrapped in blue tissue paper – it had two shortalls in it, one made of blue jean material, and the other yellow with little red fire engines and baby firemen all over. It was horrible. Of course, I would have given a million dollars for any of that stuff – if no one knew I had it.

            Everyone was smiling at me as though it’s was a great joke. Sally is giggling, and her father and mother both have funny smirks on their faces.

            “Looks like just the right presents for you too!” Mr. Petersen says looking down at my trousers.

            There I stood – a wet pants boy with a pile of diapers. I was shocked, horrified, scared, embarrassed – horribly embarrassed, and maybe – maybe just a little bit excited.

            “They say Timmy, be careful what you wish for – you might get it.” Aunt Alice picks up two of the diapers and a pair of the plastic pants and reaches out and takes my hand. “Up stairs we go – I think it’s time for you to really get dressed up for your party.” I don’t know what to do. So I don’t do. Aunt Alice just leads me up the stairs, into my room and closes the door.

             I stand there looking too scared to say anything. “Looks like Mr. Petersen was right dear.” I realize that I’m even wetter than I was before Uncle Murph and I got back. I have a sinking certainty that I just wet my pants again in front of everyone. Aunt Alice pulls out a changing mat from under my bed. It’s just like the ones they have for toddlers and little kids, ceptin its bigger.

            “I -. I-, I –“, I’m trying to say something, anything, I just can’t seem to find any words/

            “No Timmy, don’t say anything.” Aunt Alice just puts her finger on my lips and plants a gentle kiss on the top of my head. She reaches over and pulls my shirt over my head, and then unsnaps my jeans and pulls them down. Taking me into the bathroom, I find the tub already full of water and bubble bath. There is a little yellow rubber ducky floating in the middle. As she bathes me, she says, “Timmy, it wasn’t too difficult for us to figure out where all those wet towels in the bathtub came from. You know, even Aunt’s like to check on their little guys in the middle of the night. Make sure they’re covered up and all. That is besides finding the picture of your little friend lying beside you when we took that photo, and the GoodNites hidden under your mattress when you first arrived. Not to mention the diaper pins hidden under the shirts in your bureau. You really want to wear diapers – don’t you?”

            I just nodded. Scrubbed and clean, dried and smelling of scented bubblebath, she took me back into my room and had me lie on the bed. Out came a pink bottle of baby lotion, which she smoothed all over my skin. Made me lie on my tummy as she rubbed it in. Her hand stroked the lotion into my fanny, running over my bottom and down the crease between my cheeks. As her fingers stroked down into my crack, they paused over my little hole, and she gave a little push in that made me shiver with embarrassed pleasure. Gently she rolled me over. I was blushin something fierce, but she justs hums a little tune as she smooths lotion in all over my front, around my little cowboy, and down between my legs. It feels so good her hand running over my privates. I guess after her washing me down there all the time in the bath tub, I was kinda over feeling too shy about her touching me between my legs. I musta had a pretty goofy expression by that time cause she looks at me and gives a little chuckle: “seems like we got your number Timmy”.

She then reached over and picked up the diapers and held them up for me. “Pretty pink edging – don’t you think?” She folded the diapers, and I enthusiastically lifted up my fanny so she could slide them under me. They was plenty thick, and I could feel their warm wonderful pressure as she pulled them up spreading my legs further apart. She chose one little yellow ducky pin, and one bright blue teddy bear pin: ‘for contrast,’ she said, and pinned me up tight and snug. She pulled open the plastic pants and held them up to my face so I could smell their fresh wonderful scent, and then had me stick my legs into the air, just like a little kid, so she could pull them on. Afterwards she had me stand up on the bed while she tucked in all the loose diaper material. When she’d finished, she smiled and leaned over and kissed me on my tummy, “you make a pretty cute little baby diaperboy!” While she was checking me over to see that everything was in order, Uncle Murph came into the room.

            I looked at him with sort of an embarrassed smile and he just grins back at me. Taking one hand while Aunt Alice took the other, the two of them walked me down the stairs. Something clicked. It was like I had been waiting for this all my life. As they brought me into the livingroom, everyone was waiting. I could see the Petersens and Gus smiling at me. They didn’t seem mean-like smiles. More like pleased smiles. I felt sorta ashamed, and I musta been very pink too - but as I looked around the room, I saw that picture of the little boy in his pouchy old plastic pants – just like mine, holding on to his two parents – just like me and my aunt and uncle. I guess I sorta grinned sheepishly at everyone.

“Smile Timmy!”

Mr. Petersen had a camera, and he took my picture then and there, hanging on to both my parent’s hands – just wearing a diaper and plastic pants.

I started to protest, but Aunt Alice laughs and says, “every little boy has to have a baby book Timmy – and what better time than his first baby birthday. Although I wasn’t too sure about this, didn’t matter none, cause Mr. Petersen just kept on snapping, and I had to pose for him every which way. In the middle of all this, Sally comes up to me with a smug expression on her face and holds out another package. It’s wrapped in pink paper with little baby cowboys on it.

            “This is for you too. I made it by myself with Mom’s help.”

            I don’t think I’m gonna like what I find, and when I open it - I drop it like it was a hot potato. It’s a onesie. A onesie with the same little cute cowboys on it as the wrapping paper.

            Aunt Alice just bends over and picks it up and hands it right back to me – with a folded kids catalogue. It’s showin an almost identical onesie on a cute little blond boy riding a toyhorse. I blush something mighty. I know where she got that catalogue, and who had folded that page over so he could look at that little kid. I thought I’d hidden it pretty good under the pile of comics Gus had given me.

            So they makes me put it on. Worse – that Sally, gets to do up the snaps in the crotch. I woulda killed her if I coulda – she looked so darn smug.

“Nice shirt you got there Timmy.” She said as her dad clicked away.

 

Chapter 4 New Beginnings

            I woke up the following morning, thinking it had all been a dream. As usual I checked around me, running my hands over the sheets – the bed was dry. Then I realize I’m still wet. More – it wasn’t a dream, my sleeper has snaps around the waist, and I can feel the wet warm wonderful bulkiness of two thick cotton birdseye diapers between my legs. I let out a huge sigh and lay back. I can feel a little pressure in my bladder, and with total abandoned delight I pee some more into my diapers, feeling the fresh warmth soaking into my front. ‘Oh-joy!’ I think, ‘Life is really good’.

            “Good morning Timmy dear.” Aunt Alice walks into the room. “Time to rise and shine for the new day. Is my little boy wet?”

            I look at her and give her a sort of pleased puppy look. “Yah – real wet.” I think she’s gonna take me out of my diapers, but I get a small surprise.

            “Come on down for breakfast dear, it’s all ready.” She says, and then like she’s read my mind, “besides, wouldn’t you like to wear those wet ones a bit longer? I’m sure your Uncle Murph would like to see you in your new sleeper too. So why don’t you scoot on down and show him.”

            I guess I can’t deny myself the humiliating pleasure of being the baby boy at breakfast, so after she’s kissed me good morning – and slipped her hand in my pants to see just how wet I am, “Oooo aren’t we the soggy little cowboy”, I clamber out of bed and, waddling a bit (it feels sooo good), I’m marched on down the stairs.

             When I walk into the kitchen, Aunt Alice comes up behind me and puts her hands on my shoulders, “Well Murph, just look at our adorable little wrangler here.”

            Uncle Murph, he turns around and gives me a big smile “Pretty cute little teenbaby.”

            I guess I’m kinda grinning foolishly. Which makes him chuckle, “You really like your special birthday presents, don’t you Timmy?.”

            “Yah!” I says, and then, puzzled, I ask him “Uncle Murph, what’s a teenbaby?”

            “Well, for starters, you’re a teenbaby Timmy.”

“I’m a teenbaby?”

“Yep, a teenbaby is any boy older than about 7 who loves diapers, baby clothes, bottles, pacifiers and little boy stuff younger than is normal for his age. Some kids like diapers, some like wetting, some even like messing. It’s pretty normal for little guys to stay in diapers up to about age 4 or 5, particularly at night, but after that society tells kids in many different ways that they’re too old for that kind of stuff anymore. Trouble is, not every kid is ready to give it up when people think they should, so they’re frustrated and develop something of a fixation on the trappings of early childhood. Other kids find that they missed something they needed – a loving dad, an affectionate mother, enough attention – who knows? But it leaves them wanting to find that missing something the only way they know how – by being a little kid again. And so they like to revert back and play baby or toddler. A lot of teenbabies come from pretty troubled backgrounds – like you. Others – well everything seems normal enough about their childhood – except they find something missing. Often they don’t even know why. But the truth is, every kid is different, and no matter how perfect the parent, they can’t always fill every need a child has, so the child looks elsewhere to fill those needs.”

            “You mean I’m not the only kid who likes to wear diapers? I thought I was really weird and strange. It’s always really scared me.”

            Uncle Murph laughed, “hardly Timmy, there are a lot of kids out there just like you. Tell you what, I’ll take you to some websites about teenbabies on the Internet on my computer, and to web sites of some real teenbabies. They’re pretty easy to find if you know how.”

            “Uncle Murph, how come you know all this?”

            Uncle Murph looked a little embarrassed when I asked this. He sort of hemmed and hawed a little bit, and then said, “Well, lets just say I was a bit like you, when I was a boy.”

            “Uncle Murph?”

            “Yes.”

            “Will I these feelings ever go away?”

            “I don’t think so Timmy. I know you didn’t ask for them, but it’s pretty certain that you’re stuck with them. You know, when I told you how old teenbabies were, I included kids as young as age 8. As a practical thing, if you look on the Internet, and read what teenbabies say about themselves you’ll find that if a kid has these feelings by age 8, they are pretty much a permanent part of him. That’s why when diaper lovers refer to teenbabies, they include kids that young.”

            “Is it really bad to be a teenbaby?”

            “Timmy, its only bad if you make it bad. God deals everyone a different hand in life. Some people get all aces, some all deuces; most people get some middlin cards, a jack or a queen and a two or a three. But it’s not the cards you get – it’s how you play them that matters. You can spend the rest of your life being guilty about feelings you can’t help and didn’t ask for, you can let them dominate your entire life, you can live a little secret life and hide from everybody. Or you can learn to accept yourself, enjoy those feelings when it’s appropriate, and be open about yourself to your friends. Remember, as long as you are not hurting anyone, then you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

            “Yah – but what if I don’t really want to be a baby all my life – what if I want to grow up and get married and have a family and all that.”

            “Timmy, most people in this world actually have a pretty weird part of themselves they keep hidden away. The still get married, they still have children, and they still grow up. Just because you like to wear diapers and wear baby clothes, doesn’t mean you can’t grow up. It’s just a side of your personality – the desire to be a little kid for a bit, or to have a part of you that’s always a little kid. Growing up actually has little to do with age, or how you dress or think. It’s all about accepting adult responsibilities. That starts with accepting responsibility for yourself, accepting and understanding the consequences of your actions and how they affect others. It’s realizing that an adult behaves responsibly and honestly. Most important of all, an adult recognizes that the most important responsibility he has is to nurture and protect children. The most childish behavior of all is when someone treats another person – child or adult – as an object that they can play with or use, rather than as a human being like themselves. We think that you will grow up just fine – even if you do it in a romper and diapers.”

            “Yah – but what girl is ever gonna marry some guy who likes to wear diapers all the time?”

            “You know Timmy, there are a lot of people over the age of 21 who never grow up emotionally. If you turn into an adult emotionally, I think you’ll find that there are lots of girls who will accept you, as you are – diapers and all. On the Internet, there are lots of happily married diaper lovers. You might have noticed, by the way, that Sally doesn’t seem to exactly be going out of her way to avoid you.”

            Aunt Alice was hugging me from behind, me standing there in my bulky wet diapers and sleeper as Uncle Murph was saying all this. I was amazed and no little relieved to hear that there were other kids like me – and that my Aunt and Uncle knew about them. Gee, they seemed to know a lot more about kids like’n diapers than I did. As I pondered all this, Aunt Alice gave me a squeeze, and said, “Timmy, I think its time you told us all about yourself. About your diapers and all that stuff.”

            So I sat down at the table and started talking. They just sat there and listened. I told them about how lonely I felt. How scared I was living with mom and living at Old Mrs. Brown’s. How I didn’t seem to have nuthin or no one in the world that mattered. I told them how, after mom busted my leg, I woke up in the hospital to find I was wearing a diaper. I didn’t remember much about it when they brought me in – I guess I was in shock. Anyway, they put me out when they set my leg cause they had to put some metal pins in it to hold it together. I guess, me being a little kid an all, they just put a diaper on as a matter of course. Anyway, when I discovered the diaper I wasn’t too happy about it. I knew I was too old for diapers – they was for little kids and babies, not big boys like me.

When the nurse came in, I told her so. She just smiled and said “Well let me see – and she uncovered me – I was lyin there in some sort of cotton robe thing, kinda like a girls nightie, and she just undid it at the side and opened it up. I was a little embarrassed, but she was sooo gentle, and she gave my head a little pat, and then said, “Well let’s see now if you’re dry. Oh-my! Timmy you’re pretty wet aren’t you? I guess I must have felt a little bit ashamed, but she just laughed, and said, “I guess we’ll just put another one of these on you, and see if you can stay dry.” She washed me all over then. She called it a bed bath. It felt real nice. Then she puts some baby oil on me and another diaper. When she’s done she gives me a kiss and goes off. Well no one ever did that to me before – she was so nice, and made me feel so nice too! I guess I decided right then and there that I liked having her diaper me. I guess I had some sort of puppy love crush on her. I think she really liked babying me too – she told me about all kinds of boys my age and older who she had put in diapers, and how they didn’t mind neither. So I kept on wetting them as long as I was there. Since I was in traction, it was two weeks before I got outa that hospital, and I think it was the nicest time I ever had till now. Course Mom didn’t put up with any of that none. She told me that I wasn’t gonna be her diaper baby when she brought me home, and that I better not start wetting the bed anymore’n I did or she’d give me a lickin I’d really remember.

After that I was pretty careful – I mean Mom made it pretty clear that she didn’t want any diaper wearing kid in her house – she was through with all that. But we moved around a lot, and sometimes there were little kids around at a neighbors, or even staying with us that wore diapers. I was pretty good at sneaking a diaper unnoticed. I’d stuff it in my underwear and wear it for the day. When no one was around I’d wet it, and stuff it in the trash. After I started living with Mrs. Brown, I was able to use the money Old Mr. McGiver gave me to buy those GoodNites things. She didn’t care much what I did, and even when she found them under my bed, all she did was tell me what a baby I was. Main problem was hiding em from the other kids. Didn’t want none of em to know, even if some of them also wet the bed. Guess I felt guilty cause I knew I wasn’t wearing em to keep my bed dry. I’d put them on and then dream about being a little kid whose parents loved him so much they kept him and diapers and had him wear little kids stuff all the time cause they liked their little boy that way.

“Is that why you hid all your stuff when you came here dear?”

“Yah, I guess so. I didn’t think you guys would like it much an all anyways.”

“Well now you know dear. We think that it’s just fine for you to wear diapers, and maybe if you do feel a little bit ashamed some times, just remember that it’s not what’s really important. If you grow up emotionally, and we think you’ll do just fine, then your diapers don’t mean fiddleysticks. In fact, we think it’s a lot better for you to relax and enjoy being a little boy while you can. Besides, we’re going to love helping you do just that. We like you this way. And now, I think its time to scoot on upstairs and get you dressed. We have a big day ahead of us. We’re all going on a shopping expedition - all the way to Billings.

            So Aunt Alice takes me back up the stairs to get dressed. When we get to my bedroom, she goes in and draws me a bath, then unsnapping me around the waist, she helps me strip off the sleeper, exposing my full diapered glory to the morning air. Looking me over she carefully inspects the wet soggy lump bulging out between my legs. I can feel her inspecting every contour and ruffle of my plastic pants when she leans forward and runs her finger up between my diapers and my leg. “My you are such a good little wetter Timmy. You did a wonderful job of soaking those diapers for me. I hope I find my little boy just like this every morning.” Aunt Alice then pats my fanny and gives my diaper bulge a little squeeze in front as we smile at each other. She then pulls down my plastic pants, having me step out of them, unpins my diapers and scoots me off to soak in the tub. A little while later she fetches me out and dries me off all over, and lays me down on the bed. Next to me is a big bag of those new Pampers^®6. I look over at them, “Wow! Real baby diapers – are they for me?”

“Of course, silly, who’d you think they were for – Uncle Murph? Why I don’t think they’d fit him. Do you?”

“I giggled at that, “Nah. – that’s silly.”

She just got a strange little smile on her face, and then she opened up the bag and pulled one out for me to play with, as she unfolds another and slipped it under me, taping up the sides. Then she reaches over and picks up one of my new shortalls. The ones made of denim. She has me step into them, does up the shoulder straps, and then has me hop down off the bed.

“Go put on your shoes dear.’

“No shirt, Aunt Alice?”

“Oh, it’s so hot today, I think you would be more comfortable without one.”

“OK.”

As she picks up the things from my diaper change and puts them away, I get my old tennis shoes on and go and look at myself in the mirror. You’d have to look pretty hard to guess there was a pampers under my little shortalls, but then again, you might expect them to be there, considerin how much like a little kid them trousers made me look. I couldn’t see the red snaps when I was standin up, but when I turned around, bent over and looked back at the mirror – they stood out like neon lights – all 4 of them.

“My you look cute in your new shortalls Timmy. Let’s hurry up and go join Uncle Murph at the truck. We already have a picnic all packed and ready to go.”

So I run downstairs and out across the yard to where Uncle Murph already had the truck revved and ready to go. As I climbed in the back, I noticed Aunt Alice bringing a large hamper with her. It was too big just for a picnic, so as she put it in the back, I asked her what was in it.

“Oh, just some extra things for you to wear when we get to Billings.”

That was a relief to me. While I loved my new shortalls, and wearing em around Aunt Alice and Uncle Murph, I wasn’t at all sure about parading around in them all over town.

I was pretty surprised then, when, instead of driving through Red Lodge, Uncle Murph turned the truck into the parking lot of the Red Lodge Emporium and Tack Shop. Despite my imploring look, Aunt Alice just held the door open until I got out. So shortly thereafter, I was, standing in the entryway to that store. There seemed to be a million people in there, and it felt like most of em was looking right at me. I guess they must have thought I was pretty cute and all, standin there with just a pair of shortalls on and a pair of sneakers, cause several of them smiled at me. This caused me considerable chagrin, as I could see they thought I musta been about 6 or 7 – which I supposed was probably cause I was a bit small for my age as well as the way I was dressed.

Anyways, we hadn’t been there a moment before this big round man comes storming over, “Well greetings Murphy’s, I see you brought your new tyke in. Pretty nice looking kid. What brings you in here today?”

Me personally was trying to fade from view here.

“Well Bill, our nephew Timmy here,” and she gives me a little push out in front of her and Uncle Murph, “has a pair of cowboy boots he’d like to exchange.”

I’d forgotten about my cowboy boots.

“Well you just come over here, little guy,” this was getting a little thick, “and we’ll just sit you down and bring you something to try on.”

Before I know it, I’m sitting on a bench in the middle of the store with Mr. Moore (turns out he was an old friend of the Murphy’s), holding one of my feet in a measuring device, with my legs wide open – the crotch of my shortalls on full display to everyone.

“Nice trousers you got there son, real cute snaps, must come in handy for long trips.” He had me blushing pretty pink. He also got a pretty good chuckle out of everyone when he brought over a little pair of toddler-styled cowboy boots and pretended to try them on me too. It seemed like I was on display on that bench for a coon’s age, still, when he finally got the right size – – they was downright wonderful. They were that rough brown kinda unfinished leather with real neat patterns stitched up the sides with the right kinda heel for riding my pony.

“There ya go, little wrangler, a tyke like you couldn’t look like more of a real cowboy if he tried.”

The affect of the cowboy boots together with my shortall musta been something. But as far as I was concerned, it was the first pair of new shoes I could ever remember own’n. It took considerable persuasion for my Aunt and Uncle to get em off my feet for the next few weeks – even when I went to bed.

As we left the store, Mr. Moore reaches over to a rack of hats near the door, and plops one down right on top of my head. “There ya go Timmy,” and he smiles down at me, “Here’s a present from me to you welcoming you to Red Lodge. It’s a real Stetson – so take good care of it. Every young cowboy’s got to have one. Now you look like a real Montana wrangler.” With that he gives me a very firm pat on my fanny. From the little squeeze I figure he’s looking for something – and I guess he found it.

“Well, I see you’re all fixed up for a long trip Timmy. Have a good time, and make sure you keep those pants dry.”

I was blushing something fierce by the time we reached the car, but Aunt Alice and Uncle Murph, they was just grinnin. I guess they thought the whole show was pretty funny. Anyways they make me stands in front of the car, while they photographs the whole outfit. I just wish they’d let me escape out of view of all the strangers walking by, but there is little hope. Finally, after what seems like forever, we all get in and drive out of the parking lot.

“Did Mr. Moore know about my diapers before you brought me in?” I asked them accusingly.

“Well, Timmy, Mr. Moore is one of your father’s oldest friends. Him and his friend Shem are pretty much family. Just like the Petersens. There’s not much of anything they don’t know about our family.”

“Boy did you have to tell the whole world!”

“No, and we didn’t Timmy, but we think it best for you if our close circle of friends know. You’re going to see them all the time when you are staying with us, and you’re better off not thinking you have to hide your teenbaby side from them. We like you just the way you are, and I know that they do too.”

“You must have some pretty weird friends if they think a ten year old boy in diapers and baby clothes is just swell.”

Aunt Alice and Uncle Murph just smiled at me when I said this. Finally, Uncle Murph replied, “Timmy, don’t get upset about it. They are our friends, they are nice people, and they all are a little strange in one way or another. But then, most of us are. The fact is, we knew that they would accept you, approve of you, and like you as is. That should be more than enough for you, and you should be grateful to have found a bunch like that.”

 

We drove along down the highway out of the western Montana mountains and towards the dry grass country surrounding Billings. As we went along I dozed a bit and stared out the window between naps as the scenery went by. The low hills exposed rocks and formations unlike any I’d seen in Virginia, with their dry tawny palette of colors, the dry green of sagebrush and mesquite, punctuated by the occasional yellowed swath of July farmland in the low valleys with a creek or a river. As we went along Uncle Murph pointed out a buck deer off the road up on the hillside. After that I stared even harder into the brush trying to see another. I was the first to see the antelope grazing ahead of the car. As we drew near they raced us, keeping up for a mile or more, impossibly leaping over barbed wire fences and obstacles of all kinds before turning off and trotting up onto a ridge to watch our passing.

            Finally, a little after noon, Murph pulls the truck off into a rest area beside the road. There were several tables with some locust trees to provide shade, as well as toilets and a water fountain. Murph parked in front of one of the tables and we got out of the truck. The air smelled hot and dry as we got out, our feet crunching on the gravel as the cicadas shrilled in the afternoon sun. Aunt Alice reached in the back and gets out the picnic basket which she hands to me, and then grabs the big hamper. We carry these things over to the table and as I am about to explore the contents of the lunch, I see her getting some heavy cloth diapers out of the hamper, as well as a pair of my plastic pants. Then she pulls out my changing mat, and places it on the table.

            “Hop up for a change Timmy, you’ve been in that pamper for hours, and its gonna start leaking pretty soon if I don’t get it off you.”

            I looked at her in disbelief. I mean that rest area was exposed to the world. There were cars coming down that road. The table was in full view; and if that weren’t bad enough, it was highly likely that someone would pull in at anytime.

            “Aunt Alice, someone could see me here, why can’t you do it in the car?”

            “Oh, it will be much more fun out here in the open Timmy, besides you need all the nice fresh air after being in that stuffy old hot car.”

            “But, Aunt Al- - - “

            “Up you go cowboy!” Uncle Murph lifted me off the ground from behind and plopped me down on the table, leaving his arm sorta casually across my chest. “You need my help staying there?”

            Warn’t much I could do about things, so as my Mom always said, if you are going to get raped, you might as well lay back and enjoy it.” I shook my head and relaxed, and Uncle Murph took his arm away – giving me a wink and a smile.

            He might have thought this was all good fun, but I wasn’t mindful I had the same opinion. Of course as Aunt Alice was unsnapping my shortalls, I hear a car come down the road and pull into the rest area. As she is pulling my trousers legs up over my waist, I can hear doors banging and about a million kids getting out of a car. Sure as shootin I hear them and their parents coming up to the picnic table next to ours. Then a little boy’s voice.

            “Mom! Look at the big boy on the table. He’s wearing a diaper. Why’s he wearing a diaper?”

            ‘Shhh, Joshua, don’t embarrass him.”

            “But Momma, I don’t have to wear diapers anymore, do I? So I’m a big boy now. Does that mean he’s a baby like I used to be?”

            “Joshua, you sit down while I get your lunch.”

            I hear a lot more giggling as the rest of the children come up and see what’s going on at our table. I hear the mother shushing them.

            “My goodness! What a wet little boy you are Timmy!” Aunt Alice’s voice sounds like the trumpets of Gabriel.

There are snickers from the next table, as she pulls off my Pampers, putting them on display on the table next to the cloth diapers and plastic pants.

“Thank heavens I brought these baby wipes with me, now you just roll over so I can clean your little bottom.”

Humiliation comes in many flavors. This one was cherry jubilee chocolate sundae with nuts and whipped cream. Cherry was definitely the flavor, as that was exactly what color red I was by now.

Aunt Alice just kept on as though nothing unusual at all was happening; she slowly and meticulously wiped both my bottom and my front, and then got out the bottle of pink baby lotion and started smoothing it in. She smirked a little as my little cowboy decided to come to life, but she gave me a little wink and casually dropped a corner of the fresh diaper she was pulling up between my legs over it. After pinning me up, would you believe she made me stand up on that table in full view of everyone while she pulled up my plastic pants, checked all around that the cloth was tucked under and then made me spread my legs as she snapped up the crotch of my shortalls – one snap and comment at a time.

“Well now, I guess my dry boy is ready for his lunch.”

It seemed like forever before that family left, and it was obvious that Aunt Alice was going to make me sit in full view of them – with my now very obviously padded shortalls – as long as they stayed. So lunch was a casual affair, though I thought my sandwich unusually tasteless – I’m not even sure what I was eating. Coulda been cardboard with dead toad for all I knew.

At last they packed up and I could hear their car drive off.

“Aunt Alice, why’d you do that?”

“Because I think you really want to be treated this way Timmy, besides we enjoy it too.”

“You guys really like doing this?”

“Well Timmy, I guess that makes us just the right folks for you – doesn’t it?”

I looked at her. She looked at me. I looked at Uncle Murph. Uncle Murph looked at me.

“Hmmph!” It was hard to admit, but, yah! - it was kinda fun – a bit. “But those kids - - -“

“Will never see you again. What’s more, they had a giggle. So no harm was done – was it?”

“I guess not. But what if we go where people might know me?”

“That’s why you got to wear a Pamper^® in Red Lodge, but why you are wearing your regular diapers in Billings.”

“But I thought you brought me some regular clothes to wear in Billings!”

“Nope, just a couple of extra changes for you, a striped T-shirt with some nice snaps on the shoulder to go with your shortalls if it gets cool, and a sleeper to put on you in the parking lot when we leave this evening.”

“Aunt Alice!”

“Don’t Aunt Alice me young man! They say: beware what you ask for, you might get it.”

“But I didn’t ask to be put in diapers this morning!”

“You sure didn’t object – did you?”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“Not exactly at all – you mean.”

“Yah, but –“

“No ‘yah-buts’ about it. When you get diapered for the day – you get diapered for the day, no matter what comes. We get to decide how you’ll be dressed, and where you’ll go – just like any toddler. Isn’t that what you really want?”

“Well, kinda - but do I have to be a baby all the time? I mean, I kinda like being dressed this way, but more like, you know, kinda like, maybe a 4 or 5 year old whose just a little too old for diapers, but not quite, so its kinda alright and all.”

Uncle Murph and Aunt Alice grinned and said, “That’s fine with us. You’ll make a really cute older toddler in diapers.”

“What if I really don’t want to wear them sometimes – I mean, I’d kinda like to be just a boy some of the time, and I don’t want to eat no baby food or drink from bottles or any of that stuff.”

“Timmy, we aren’t going to make you do anything you really don’t want to do. If you don’t want to wear diapers for the day, just tell us so when it’s time to get dressed - and you’re on your own: big boy for the day. But don’t you think its better to wear them at night.”

“I’d like to wear them every night Aunt Alice!”

“We thought so. I guess that you should have a way of telling us if you really can’t stand what’s going on. So lets make a deal. You can have a code phrase – how about ‘Nothings for all the time’. If you say that to us twice in a row, it means you really want out of whatever situation you’re in. But if you use it too often, well then there may not be too many next times. You understand?”

“Uh-huh. But what about most of the time? Can’t I just wear diapers and little kids clothes, but kinda be treated my own age?”

“I think that’s what we’ll do most of the time. OK!”

“OK!”

When another car pulled in while we were packing up, disgorging another family into the picnic area, I made a point of strolling through them in my outfit. When they stopped and looked at me, I stuck my thumb in my mouth and smiled, then headed for our car. It felt good.

 

We arrived in Billings at about 2:30. I didn’t know what the Murphys were shopping for, and I kinda hoped I could convince them to take me to GoodWill to get a few things. Well, they drove into the parking lot of a big WalMart, and took me in there with em. Boy I felt strange walking around in just heavy diapers, shortalls and cowboy boots. Just like the Red Lodge Emporium, I could see a few adults looking at me. When they happened to notice me looking back, they just smiled nicely and went on though, so I guess my small size made me look almost young enough for my outfit. But several kids stopped and stared and giggled which made me blush like crazy.

Still I guess I was enjoying walking around with the feel of my now wet and heavy diapers bunched between my legs. It was sorta nice walking along, holding Uncle Murph’s hand. Still I felt a little bashful, bein towed through that store by my Aunt and Uncle. But if that weren’t enough, we comes to this kiddy portrait department where they have a raised platform in front of a big camera, with all kinds of little kids toys, and a nursery kinda backdrop with cutesy giant teddy bears and candy canes. Aunt Alice looks at me and Murph, and Murph just smirks and nods his head. Up I go. Makin it worse were the two teenage girls taking the photos. They thought I looked just adorable, and wasn’t I the sweetest. They laughed as I scowled, and wouldn’t let me down until ‘Little Timmy made nice smiles for the camera.’

            Uncle Murph and Aunt Alice thought it was hysterical. I thought it was humongously mortifying.

            The next stop, to my surprise, was in the boy’s department.

            “Timmy, there isn’t much you don’t need, so lets go over here and start with the basics.”

            I looked at Aunt Alice in surprise. “You gonna buy me new stuff?”

            She nodded her head. I’d couldn’t believe it – I was gonna get New clothes. Not some old discards other kids had worn before. I was really excited. However.

            Underwear.

            I don’t think there are many boys who relish the idea of having their mother take them to buy underwear. I also don’t think that there are many ten year olds who have had the experience wearing diapers and dressed as a toddler.

            Aunt Alice hauled me over to a rack of the stuff, and pulled a package off the shelf and held it in front of me as though she could see if they fit that way. “Oh dear, I haven’t the slightest idea what size a boy like you wears Timmy.”

            Then she spotted a clerk not to far away and calls her over.

            “Could you tell me what size underwear this boy needs? He’s our nephew and he’s just come to live with us, so we don’t have the slightest idea.”

            The clerk takes one look at my outfit, and looks at Aunt Alice a bit strangely, “Ah, er, ah, well does he need it to go over the diapers?”

            I reddened up again.

            “Heavens no, he has plastic pants for that. No we are hoping that he will be able to wear them to school by the time fall comes, and decided it was time to get him some big boy underwear as an incentive. Don’t you think that is a good idea.”

            I was blushing crimson by now. How was it that Aunt Alice, even with everything else she’d done and said, could always come up with a new and novel way of making me want to disappear into the bowels of the earth?

            “Well, that just might work. Well young man, I guess I’d better measure you up.” With that she pulls out a cloth measuring tape and then looks at my waist a bit skeptically.

            “Oh just a minute,” my Aunt says, and to my horror reaches over and pulls open the snaps in my crotch and lifts the legs up to my chest, exposing my diapers and plastic pants to the world. “There now, you can get that tape around his waist if we just push his diapers down a bit. We also need to know what size shirt and jacket he wears and what size pants.”

            The lady quickly puts the tape around me, and pulls it snug. “That would be a size ten, just like his age, and let’s see now.” She reaches down and puts one end of the tape on the floor next to my foot, and then pulls the other end up under my crotch, “He’ll need a size – lets see,” she proceeded to push the tape up firmly into my crotch pushing it against the bunched up diapers, “hmm -, I guess I better add an inch, no maybe two inches to that – do you want them to fit over the diapers?”

            I squirmed something mighty as she measured me.

            “Well, we’ll want some pants for him to wear to school, and some for over the diapers for now.

            “OK, well, lets see then, that would be about a 22 inch leg without the diapers, and maybe an inch shorter with them. – and, she added, looking at me, I’d say you better get an extra size in the waist with the shorter leg. Well, if that’s all, I better get back to work. Good luck on staying dry young man, I’m sure that will please your Aunt and Uncle.”

            “Well, Alice, lets see if we can find him a shirt that goes nicely with such a beautiful shade of crimson.” Uncle Murph said.

            I glared at him, and both of them chuckled. They had no mercy.

            Well they hauled me through that store. I had to try on pants with diapers on and without diapers on. I got exposed in my diapered glory all over the place. With no shirt, that meant standing around in a store full of people in front of clerks in just my birthday suit and diapers. But hey, I got me 4 new pairs of Levis, a bunch of new T-shirts, some dress shirts, as well as a real nice parka, mittens, hat and gloves. That made me feel really good – maybe they were planning on letting me stay – at least for the school year. After a while I found I could relax a bit, and even enjoyed being showed off all over the place. It was kinda nice to be their little toddler like that in front of everyone. And like Aunt Alice said, I was unlikely to ever see anyone in that store again.

After going to a feed store and a specialty hardware shop for Uncle Murph, the last stop was for new sneakers – didn’t get the Air Jordan’s but they did buy me a pretty cool pair nonetheless. Even after all that had happened it was a bit embarrassing when the clerk made me sit down so he could try on all the shoes. He kept staring at my trousers and at me pretty funny. Can’t say I blame him, you don’t see many ten year olds sitting around in diapers, and shortalls with a snap crotch. By that time, however, I was used to the whole thing so, I just spread my legs and let him see everything. It seemed to make him real nervous like, he kept fumbling around with the shoes he was bringing for me to try on, messing up stitching up the laces and all. He actual stuttered a few times when he tried to show me the features on some of them. I began to get the idea of what his real problem was when I saw that he had a real bad bulge in his trousers. Uncle Murph saw it too.

            “What’s your name son?”

            “Oh ah, ah George sir.”

            “Do you work here full time or part time.”

            “Oh I a- a-, part time sir, I’m a freshman over at the community college.”

            “Really, do you get many kids like Timmy here?”

            “Ah, what do you mean?”

            “I mean wearin such a cute outfit at his age.”

            The boy started blushing furiously, having realized that his interest in my shortalls and diapers was obvious to both the adults. In fact, quite quickly his face turned from bright red to a rather pale white. I kinda wondered if he was gonna faint.

            “Ah- ah- what do you mean, Sir?”

            “I mean you really seem to like my nephew’s diapers and shortalls – don’t you?” Uncle Murph gave a meaningful glance right at the young man’s crotch.

            It looked like my shoe clerk was about to pass out.

            “P- p- please sir, I ah, I ah“

            My uncle gave a chuckle, “That’s OK son, we’re glad that you enjoy looking at him and his diapers. I think he kinda likes it too – don’t you Timmy?”

            “Sure, it’s kinda fun to play toddler when my Aunt and Uncle take me shopping.”

            “Y-, y-, you mean that you like to wear this kinda stuff?”

            “Sure, don’t you.” I looked at him with a knowing look in my eye. He stared back for a bit, and then blushed, but stuttered out “I, ah - I thought I was the only kid who felt that way. He looked at Aunt Alice and Uncle Murph, with kinda a pleading scared expression.

            “Well, well, surprise, surprise!” Aunt Alice smiled, another diaper boy right here in Billings. No George, though it isn’t all that common, there are lots of boys who like baby clothes and diapers. Didn’t you know that?”

            “Ah no, I never heard of anyone liking this stuff before. I thought I’d die if anyone ever found out.”

            “Do you have a computer George?”

            “Yah, I just got one for college a week ago, but I’m still getting it set up.”

            “Well George, as soon as you can, get hooked up to the Internet, then go to the pull down menu on your browser and select search. When a search engine comes up –just type in ‘teenbaby’, and see what you find – I think you will be delighted.”

            “Really?”

            “Really.”

            “Hey Uncle Murph, how come you’ve never shown me that on your computer?” Now I was curious too.

            “Well you never owned up that you really liked this stuff until today – did you. And besides, I thought I already told you this morning that we might just let you spend a little supervised time on my computer to investigate this stuff.”

            The boy was standing there, with a terrific bulge in his trousers, holding a shoebox in one hand, and a sneaker hanging down in the other. “You mean your nephew just told you about this – how come he has all this stuff already?”

            “Because we figured it out a long time ago and ordered it for him for his surprise birthday party yesterday.”

            “Gee, Timmy, they gave you diapers and those shortalls for your birthday. Were there guests there and all that too?”

            “Yah, and I was really surprised too. It was awful embarrassing, but everyone was pretty nice. They seemed to think it was just fine.”

            “Boooy are you lucky. You get to wear diapers and stuff all the time now?”

            “Yah!”

            “I sure wish I could, but I think my friends would go nuts, not to mention my Mom.”

            Uncle Murph had been looking the boy over pretty carefully. “How long you been working here Son?”

            Well I started over a year ago cause I knew I’d need the money to go to college and all that. Mr. Caruthers, he’s even promoted me to full salesman cause I work so hard. Last month I sold twice as many shoes as any other kid he’s ever hired.

            “Well I suspect that even with all that, Mr. Caruthers is unlikely to approve if you showed up in diapers to work.”

            George laughed, “I don’t think so sir.”

            Well I’ll tell you what, we have a small ranch over near Red Lodge, and our hired man likes to take a month off every summer if he can. Didn’t do it this year, what with Timmy arriving and all, so next summer he’s taking off for Alaska for two months. We could use a little extra help, so if you’d like you could work for us for the whole summer. We’ll even throw in all the diapers you can wear, and the use of the washing machine.”

            “Are you serious?”

            “Yes son, it’s hard enough for diaper kids to accept themselves, and since you’re willing to work hard, and honest enough to fess up here about Timmy and his diapers getting you excited, I think you’d do well and have a good time.”

            Uncle Murph wrote out our address and telephone number for the kid when we paid for the shoes. And as we were the last customers before closing, George locked up and escorted us out to the car.

“Thanks Mr. Murphy, you don’t know how much this means to me. All my life I’ve wanted to wear diapers. I always felt like having to always stay dry and not wet my pants was somehow; well –ah, well not right for me.

“George.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’ll bet you’ve always wanted to just wet your pants in front of strangers while you were talking to them as though nothing unusual in the world were happening. Haven’t you?”

George turned a little red, but said, “How’d you know that?”

“Because, George, when I was a boy your age, I was a lot like you. Since, we’re not going to see each other until next summer, why don’t you do it, right now, while we’re talking. Then we’ll know how serious you are about coming next summer.”

I could see George squirming at the suggestion, but he looked around in kinda a scared way around the parking lot, and then I saw something click in his eyes. He sorta grinned, and gave a funny look. A big wet stain appeared right on the front of his trousers and soaked its way down the crotch and legs.

“Well George, it’s pretty clear you really do need diapers, isn’t it,” my Uncle said.

“Yes Sir.”

Well, at that Uncle Murph opens the truck door for me and Aunt Alice.

 Just before I got in George looked at me, “Thanks Timmy for letting me see you in your stuff, I’m gonna be thinkin about how cute you look for the whole year. I sure hope I see you again.”

            “Uncle Murph?”

            “Yes Timmy?”

            “Can I have one of those photos of me you got from WalMart?”

            Uncle Murph looks at me, and I can sees he understands what I want to do, “Sure Timmy, here you go.” Uncle Murph takes out the envelope that we’d collected on our way out of WalMart and pulls out a couple of the photos and hands them to me. I picked one out and got a pen out of the glove compartment. I wrote on the back of the photo, ‘To George from his friend Timmy, I hope we see each other again too.’ Uncle Murph looked over my shoulder, and I could see he saw what I wrote. I think he understood that the message wasn’t just for George. I was hoping I’d also be there next summer when George came. I pretty much knew from the expression on George’s face that at least he would be there – but I wasn’t sure yet, despite everything, that I was gonna be.

            I handed it to George and he looked at, me in all my glory, bulging diapers, shortalls, red snaps, cowboy boots, and then my note on the back. I thought he was gonna faint again, but he sorta gasped out, “Th- th- thanks Timmy, I’m not sure you have any idea how much this means to me?”

            I gave him a very knowing look and a wink, “Oh, I think I do, and I hope you enjoy the picture a lot.”

            Uncle Murph looked a little startled, cause I think he could see I knew exactly what was going to happen with George and that photo. After all, I did have my photo of my 2 year old in the pouchy plastic pants, and I was a lot more worldly than Uncle Murph ever guessed – though I’m not sure that that was a good thing for a kid my age to be.

            As I started to get back into the truck, Aunt Alice says, “Hold it right there cowboy, its time for you to have a little change.”

            I roll my eyes, ‘here we go again.’

            George looks a little embarrassed, but I can see he’s pretty excited by what is about to happen. “I guess I better leave then.”

            More of a hopeful question, than a statement.

            “No George, you stay right here and watch, I am sure you really want to, and Timmy won’t mind – much.”

            So Aunt Alice pulls out that changing mat of hers and lays it on the parking lot next to the truck. Then she proceeds to unbutton my shortalls and pulls them off. I can see George’s eyes bulging as he looks at my equally bulging wet diapers and frosty white plastic pants.”

            “Wow!” he says.”

He really has a tent poll sticking up in his wet trousers now. Then to George’s obvious delight, my Aunt strips off my diapers and has me lie down on the mat. Right there. In the parking lot. Cars coming down the road nearby. People walking down the sidewalk not 40 feet away. She gets out the wipes and the baby oil, and just merrily proceeds along like any mom changing any toddler. Then she pulls out two more big thirsty cotton diapers, with their pink edging, and pins me up. She has me stand up in full view of the world to step into my plastic pants – which, as usual, she carefully, and slowly, and methodically examines all around, tucking in any extra cloth. Finally, she pulls my new little wrangler cowboy sleeper out of the hamper, pulls the top down over my head, and has me step into the bottoms. George really liked the snaps around the waist.

“Boy are you cute Timmy!”

“Thanks, I guess.” But I smile at him, as Aunt Alice shepherds me into the truck.

            Just as we were leaving, Uncle Murph rolls down the window on the truck and says to George, who is standing there gripping the photo like it’s his dearest possession, “One last thing George.”

            “Yes Sir.”

            “My nephew has trusted you with that photo of himself – that’s a considerable honor and responsibility. I hope that it won’t turn up on the Internet?”

            George looked at my Uncle, “I guess you don’t want me to share it around?”

            “No – that’s for Timmy to decide when he’s older, don’t you think?”

            “Yes sir, I understand. Thanks.”

            I could see him standing there, wet trousers and all, as we pulled out of the parking lot, and as we drove down the street I saw him literally run to his car.

 

We went on down the road for about 2 hours. It was getting dark, and it was starting to get past dinner time. I was hope’n there was something left in the picnic basket, but just as I was about to ask, Uncle Murph pulls into a roadside diner. Once more I find myself getting dragged into a public place. My sleeper outfit was pretty overboard for a ten year old, what with the snaps and diapers, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go in. But Aunt Alice and Uncle Murph pay no heed, they just hauls me in with em.

            Fortunately, there weren’t a lot of people there, and they all seem pretty focused on eating and getting back on the road. Standing there waiting for the waitress to seat us, I saw only a few curious glances come my way. But the waitress, when she comes up, she just about has a fit.

            “Well, well, two adults and a great big baby boy, I see – come this way.” She leads us off to a table in the middle of the diner. “Pretty old for those diapers aren’t you sonny. Maybe I better get one of our highchairs for you.” She smirked at me.

 She was about 17 or 18 years old, and I could see she thought she was being real funny. I was tired, and I guess I’d had enough. “Nothings for all the time - Nothings for all the time, Aunt Alice.” I look at Aunt Alice with pleading eyes.

“Young lady, do you have a problem waiting on children? Do you always make fun of boys with handicaps? I think I might like to speak to your manager – IF I MIGHT.” Ice dripped from Aunt Alice’s voice.

“Oh! Ah! I’m sorry ma’m, that won’t be necessary, I guess I was trying to be funny. I apologize.” She dropped the menus on the table and scurried away.

‘Wow!’ I thought, ‘that was cool.”

“Thanks Aunt Alice, I’m sorry but I just got tired, and she was ragging me a bit too hard.”

“You’re welcome Timmy. I think you’re right. There’s teasing – and there’s being just plain mean.”

Dinner was ordered, served and dishes cleared up with remarkable efficiency. It was obvious that Aunt Alice had thoroughly terrified that snippy waitress. By the time we was back in the car, it was late. Last things I remember was snuggling down between my Aunt and Uncle; the music droning on the radio as we headed up the road to Red Lodge and home.

Chapter 5 Revelations

 

            Uncle Murph must’a carried me up to bed, cause I was awakened by a loud boom and a tremendous flash of light. I opened my eyes and sat up. I was in bed in my room at the ranch. Crack! A flash of lightning lit the room, then the house seemed to shudder as the boom hit. I jumped up and raced out of my room and down the hall to bang on the Murphys’ door. But – it was open. I stopped as it slowly swung open and looked in. There across the room was a big old four-poster bed with my Aunt and Uncle in it.

            “Come on in Timmy,” Aunt Alice said, “you just better hop in here right between Murph and me.”

            With another loud bang and flash of lightning, it didn’t take me a second. As I slid in between them though, I felt something strange. Uncle Murph’s pajamas had snaps on them – like mine. What’s more, I could feel – diapers. Thick diapers – just like mine.

            “Uncle Murphs wear’n diapers?”

            “Yah,” says a sleepy voice, “didn’t I tell you that I was a bit like you when I was a boy. And didn’t I tell you that those feelings don’t go away.”

            “Now you know Timmy why our bedroom door was always locked, and why the laundry was off limits. Murph didn’t want you to see his diaper pail,” Aunt Alice chuckled. “But there’s hardly a need for my big baby boy to hide from my little baby boy now is there?”

            “Are you gonna let us get some sleep woman, or you just gonna gab all night.”

 

In the morning I woke up between my Aunt and Uncle. It was real warm and cozey, and I snuggled down under the blankets a bit between them. “Morning Timmy, you awake?” Uncle Murph was already awake.

            “Uh-huh.”

            “Glad to hear you’re among the living. You wet?”

            “Uh-huh.

            “Feel good.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “Me too.”

            “Do you really like wet diapers Uncle Murph?”

            “Uh-huh!”

            I giggled, and reaching over, I patted his bottom, feeling the wet diapers beneath the sleepers and his plastic pants. “Is your sleeper just like mine Uncle Murph?”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “I didn’t know they made little kids sleepers for big guys like you.”

            “It came from the same place yours did”. Wanna go fishin today?”

            “Uh-huh.”

            We both giggled, and he reached over and patted my fanny too, then ran his fingers up my side, tickling me. Pretty soon Aunt Alice’s awakened by all our squirming and roughhousing.

            “If you boys have so much energy, why don’t you run down and get the coffee going, and let a woman get some sleep.”

            Uncle Murph and I slid out of bed, and headed for the door in our sleepers. As we were leaving, we stopped in front of the big floor to ceiling mirror on the wall. “Pretty cute sleeper Uncle Murph.” I said inspecting our reflection, “we look just like toddlers – in large and extra extra large size!” I giggled..

            “Just a pair or regular twins, nephew.”

            As Uncle Murph was getting the coffee on, Aunt Alice came down in her robe to make breakfast. “Nice to see my two little boys have set the table and got the coffee perking. Maybe I should make Timmy some hot chocolate, it’s a bit cool this morning.”

            After that, Uncle Murph and I always came down in what we wore to bed. Some days it was warm all night, and we wore just our diapers and plastic pants, other days sleepers. I guess we liked inspecting each other, and just being together in our diapers.

            The summer days marched on and September was approaching. Nothing more was said about whether I was staying or going back. If I asked Aunt Alice, she would just smile and say “Let it be Timmy, let it be.” Uncle Murph took me fishing couple times a week after that, and I got so’s I could cast a fly pretty good. Good’nuff to catch ol Mr. Trout, and by summer’s end I was bringing back a couple every time we went out. I liked trout. Aunt Alice would grill em good for dinner if they was big, and fry em up crisp for breakfast if they was small – with biscuits and bacon. I got to ride a lot, even with Gus. Now that I was wearing diapers, the ban was lifted, and he seemed even more happy of my company - what with me wearing a diaper all the time, and toddler clothes most often too.

            Sally rode over to play a few times a week. She wanted to do boy stuff mostly. She liked to wrestle, and she liked to tease something awful. But it relieved the boredom a boy feels with no one his own age to play with, and even if she could near beat me most of the time when we rode our ponies, I soon could out-fish her good. She and Aunt Alice and Uncle Murph were real close – I guess I even felt a little jealous now and then, they seemed so natural-like and happy together. I kinda felt it was my place. I sure hoped it would be my place.

            By the first week in September, I still didn’t know if I was stayin. Sally asked me what was up, and I said I didn’t know. She said she’d heard her parents talking about it and she warn’t sure neither. She didn’t want to talk about it much. That scared me. School started the end of the second week, and I worked hard at my chores, and tried to be as helpful and as polite as I could. Aunt Alice looked at me one evening and sighed, “Timmy, I know you want to know what’s happening, but Murph and I haven’t come to a decision yet, there are a lot of things here to consider, some you don’t even know about. There will have to a decision by next week, before school starts, as the Department of Children’s Services in Virginia has told us they want us to make up our minds before schools starts. In the meantime, I think there’s something you can do that might help you take your mind off things, as your worrying isn’t going to help a thing.”

            On Sunday morning I asked Uncle Murph he’d take me riding up in the hills for the day. Aunt Alice, she adds in that she would appreciate having the two of us out of her hair an all, so she can get the place cleaned without a couple of big toddlers running around making more mess for her to pick up.

            So Uncle Murph and I headed out to the barn. I was wearing diapers with my shortalls, and a snap-shoulder T-shirt; Uncle Murph was dressed the same. “Toddlers day off”, he grinned at me, packing the lunch and drinks Aunt Alice had provided into our saddlebags.

We headed off up into the Bear Tooths, Uncle Murph following a trail that took us way up above the tree line. It rapidly warmed up as we rode, and by the time we got to the top of the plateau, it’d been several hours, and we were both hot and sweaty.

We got off our horses by a small lake perched right on the edge of the mountaintop. There was a view that you could see forever. Far below us was the Stillwater River in its deep canyon, and all the plains and mountains of Montana into Wyoming laid out in front of us. Uncle Murph got out a backpacking fly rod, and he took me over to the lake to try our luck. Though we didn’t raise so much as a splash, it was fun taking turns casting with him. Before long, we’d both shed our shirts and shortalls, and were fishing up there in the big sky of the mountaintop in just our diapers and plastic pants. I loved dancing around out in the open like that. Murph did too – I could see it in his eyes as we traipsed around in just our baby pants and sneakers. The wind felt cool and fresh blowing over my naked skin; it felt so natural, so free, so wonderful – dressed just the way we wanted to be.

After a while, we got our lunch out, spreading our horseblankets on the ground, and sat down to eat lunch. Uncle Murph makes me put my Cowboy hat back on to keep the sun off my face and rubs suntan lotion all over my body, smoothing it into my skin. I do the same for him.

As we eat our lunch, and sit and talk about fishing, and bears, and cougars, and the country beneath us, Uncle Murph starts to talk about himself, about when he was a boy, and how he growed up.

Turns out Uncle Murph had it just about as bad as me when he was a kid. Unlike me, his mother and father were both at home, along with his older half brother by another woman. But that warn’t no special treat. His dad didn’t work no regular job, though he was always easy with other peoples property and involved in some scam or other. Sold some dope and other stuff too, but pretty small time. Most of the time he just sat around watching the tube and drinking a six pack or two. His mom didn’t work neither. They wasn’t married so she could collect welfare for the kids an all. His brother was six years older’n him, and he’d a sister born six years after. Perfect spacing to keep the welfare checks coming. His mother drank too most’a the time, never had no regular work neither, though she’d hustle on the streets or work a trick or too when they needed money for booze or drugs.

His dad didn’t have much time to waste on his brats, cept’n when he took a notion to do a little disciplin’n; something he took as a form of recreation and entertainment for when he got bored with the TV. Dad got busted up fair a few times. Bad enough to have to get patched up at the emergency room. His brother wasn’t much of a treat neither. He took it all out on Uncle Murph. Had a knack for getting their Dad’s ‘fatherly’ attentions directed at Murph instead of himself. More, he seemed to take particular delight in wrecking anything Murph cared about. Murph learned real quick to hide it if he liked a toy he’d come by, cause his brother would take considerable trouble to make sure it was smashed good, usually making Murph stand by helpless as the older boy wrecked it in front of him. If Murph made a friend, his brother Roy would make sure that the kid was well informed about Murph’s bedwetting, and would show off his pissy sheets with a great flourish. Not many kids wanted much to do with him once they were ‘briefed’ by Roy.

It wasn’t in Murph to pass the grief on to his little sister when she came. Instead, he discovered a fascination with her diapers, and would sneak them and try to wear them when his parents weren’t looking. When he was discovered, his dad showed him the error of his ways by breaking his arm. That was after beating him nearly senseless first.

Murph’s brother left and joined the Navy soon as he was 18, and Murph followed suit six years later, opting for the Marines. It didn’t take him long to find out that the Marines were filled with boys trying to fill men’s boots. With the rough tough macho image and the flashy uniforms it was a place for emotional misfits to convince themselves that they was ‘real men’. Not long after boot camp he stumbled onto the whole Marine gay scene. After a hard days training these combat beasts would go off hand-in-hand to the nearest gay bar. It was an easy and accepting group, these ‘pink warriors’, with plenty of Daddy types. It didn’t take him long to find a place there as the little diapered soldier boy of a big macho man ‘daddy’. And that’s how he met Mr. Petersen. Two combat diaper hunks attending the same party. Mel was his first real friend. Discovering someone who had the same bizarre interests was a treat. The whole scene was pretty wild and loose, with fag hags and lesbians all in the brew. It wasn’t long before Mel found a lesbian lover, who enjoyed dominating the baby marines, humiliating them for her girlfriends. So Murph and Mel moved in with Janet, who was also big in a local radical feminist group; and were often the happy objects of the girl’s derision – they were sort of an after meeting treat for the girls to even the score with those ‘male bastards’.

It was a pretty weird, but the strange thing was that among this group, Murph found the first real friends he’d ever had. People he could trust and care about, and who returned the favor. While each had their particular scene, this crowd of emotional misfits took care of one another, and fulfilled each ones needs without critical judgment and happy acceptance. Dad had lesbian friends, gay friends, transvestite friends, and friends with every bizarre fetish you could imagine. Mr. Moore was one of the group. Mel and Mr. Moore had grown up together in Red Lodge, where Mel’s parents owned a small ranch, and Bill’s parents the Emporium. Mel and Bill were almost like brothers. Their families were close, and they both were single children. They did just about everything together, including wetting-the-bed when they were younger, and they just naturally hung out together all through school. Lonely and desperate, when Bill finally ‘came out’ to him, Mel had told him about his diapers. After that they had a much closer relationship - so to speak. While Mel wasn’t really gay, he had some pretty heavy diaper fantasies involving a ‘loving’ daddy; a role that his friend was happy to fill. Growing up in an isolated rural community, not exactly a gay Mecca or a place known for its tolerance of bizarre fetishes, they figured they were lucky to have each other to share their interests with. So when one of them joined the marines, they other did, and while Mel eventually found his lesbian feminist dominatrix, Bill found Shem.

Eventually Janet moved out and went off to start a new life with a lesbian soul mate in a New Age commune in Minnesota. They eventually adopted a little Korean girl, and are still living there. Murph and Mel exchange Christmas cards with her, and she and her partner have brought their little girl for holidays to visit – course pointing out to the kid that these two rough-tough ranchers are really just cow-babies. While all this was happening, the leader of the radical feminist group shocked all her friends by marrying Mel, and running off to Red Lodge: becoming, to their horror, the archetype ‘all American mom’ – except for her diaper boy husband, that is. Mel had taken over the ranch, turning an unprofitable cattle business into a first rate guest ranch for hunters and ‘dudes’ from San Francisco and L.A., while his wife, surprisingly talented at needlework, started a business in designer clothes for adult babies.

“That’s where your outfits and our sleepers came from,” Uncle Murph smiled. She sized you up right away from Sally’s reports and ours, and already had those outfits for you when we finally decided to let you be the teenbaby you are. She actually thought it was pretty funny that we took so long to do it.”

“Sally’s Mom made all those clothes?”

“Yep, our diapers too. How come you think Sally could make you such a neat onesie so quick. Her mom showed her how. It all started with Sarah started making them for Mel and me, and she soon realized that there was a real business opportunity in it. Now she brings in close to half the family income. Even Mel does some sewing for her when the winter months come round, and she has several local ladies doing a lot of stitchery as well. Thanks to her Mel is the best dressed big baby around.”

“How come you never wear baby clothes Uncle Murph?”

“Oh I do, just not as often as Mel. And I kept it all under wraps when you first came. You don’t know how hard it was to go back to wearing big boy underwear and clothes for these last few months. Now I get a special kick out of dressing up like twins with you.”

“How’d you meet Mom?”

“Wasn’t long after Mel moved back to Red Lodge that I met your mother. She was working tables in a diner in San Francisco I used to go to when I was stationed at the Praesidio. I’d go there for a meal, heavily diapered so it would be obvious. A lot of our ‘crowd’ of misfits hung out there, so it wasn’t a big deal, and I enjoyed the attention I attracted. Well she thought the diaper thing was pretty funny, and she’d always stop and give me extra coffee – ‘since I had the equipment to hold it,’ she said. Well one thing led to another. Your mom wasn’t happy working at the diner, and I’d been promoted and had a sergeants pay, so she suggested we move in together. I was nuts about her. She said she loved me, and she didn’t care that I wore diapers. She even changed me a few times, and after that I’d do anything for her. Guess I was so much in love, that I chose to ignore the fact that while I paid the bills and did the housework, she was always off on ‘nights-out with the girls’. Guess it must have been a regular joke with her and her boyfriends. She’d even invite them for dinner so they could see for themselves the silly little diapered sucker she was living off of. Some of them would really give me a hard time, and she’d pretend to get angry at them.”

“Well things went along that way for about a year, and then my half brother Roy shows up. He’d just gotten out of the Navy, and chose to terminate in San Francisco. Well, just for the hell of it he looked me up. And just for the hell of it he took your Mom away from me - smashing up what I liked most –just like he always had with anything that really meant something to me. He and your Mom took over the lease to our apartment and threw all my stuff out in the street, putting all my baby clothes out on top, strewn over the pile so all the neighbors could see. When I came home; there they were laughing on the doorstep. She told me she’d always despised me, that I was a real sucker. After that Roy and her told all our mutual friends about me. Soon it was all over the Praesidio and I got discharged from the marines as ‘morally unfit’.”

“I thought they’d pretty much wrecked my life. Turns out it was the best thing that’d ever happened to me. One of her girlfriends, who’d she regaled with how she’d suckered this baby jerk, called me up and asked me to go out. She didn’t say a word about what your Mom had told her. After I’d dated her for about six months, I realized that I’d fallen in love, and that I thought maybe she’d also fallen in love with me. Well, I’d learned my lesson. One night we were in bed together, I turned to her and said; “Dear, there’s something pretty strange about me that I’m going to have to tell you about someday. Nothing bad, but you might not like it, and I think you should know it before we go much further in our relationship. If you can’t put up with it, I want you to know now, so you don’t get hurt later on.”

“I thought about it for a little bit as we lay there. She just patted me on the leg, like to say, ‘whatever it is, I love you.’ So I thought ‘what the hell’, and I told her. I finished by saying, ‘and if we ever get married, there will always be a box of my ‘stuff’ in the attic. This will never go away, it’s part of me. Then I looked at her and said, ‘I think you are the first straight person I’ve ever shared this with. You know, my telling this is like my asking you to marry me – in fact I guess that’s what I’m doing.”

“She gets this funny grin on her face, and then rolls over and reaches under the bed and pulls out a huge cloth diaper. It had ‘thanks for telling - I love you too’ monogrammed on it. She pulls out two large diaper pins, and insists that I let her put it on. As she did, she whispered in my ear; ‘you should know Murph, being the feminist that I am, that I would want to pin my man rather than the reverse.’ I guess that was the happiest moment of my life.”

“Well after that, with your Aunt Alice’s help, I went off to college. Discovered geology there – the second love of my life, and went on to graduate school at the Colorado School of Mines. After I got my masters degree I went to work for an oil company, and I guess you know the rest.”

“Wow, Uncle Murph, that’s way out cool. Why’d Aunt Alice wait for you to tell her you liked diapers when she knew it already.”

‘That’s easy. She wanted to marry someone she could trust, and she knew if I told her about my fetish, she could always do that.”

“Yeh, but how come she wanted to meet someone like you anyway?”

“Well it’s hard to explain, but she had an older brother she adored who’d been killed in Vietnam. He’d wet the bed for years, and had worn diapers. He was her gentle giant. Always protected her in school, and helped her with all the small tragedies and sorrows of a little girl’s life. She’d volunteered to help him with his diapers, and went from washing them to helping him change into nice warm clean ones. His wetting had stopped when he was 16, but once in a while, he’d very gently ask her to help him again.

Well after he was killed, she’d had a couple of rocky romances, and had had one bad experience living with a ‘real macho guy’. She liked the big strong type, but she’d never found one with the gentle side her brother had had. So when she heard about the diaper boy marine – she just had to meet him.”

“How come she likes to tease me so much? I mean she really likes to embarrass me an all that y’know.”

Uncle Murph laughed, “She likes diaper boys, and she knows that in our hearts we want to be shown off and embarrassed, and she’s always liked to tease. She near drove her brother crazy that way at home, and her parents just let her do it. Now that she has a little boy, it just comes natural. I think she does it to show you how much she loves you.”

            “Pretty odd way of showing love if you ask me. Changing a ten-year old boy in a public parking lot. Thought I was gonna near die of embarrassement.”

            “Well as far as I can see, you didn’t die, and I think you rather liked it.”

            “Yah, I guess it’s kinda fun being shown off that way an all, kinda makes me feel like I really belong to someone too.”

            Uncle Murph looks at me when I say that and mumbles, “Yes, I know what you mean.”

            That’s all. Didn’t say no more. I kinda hoped I’d hear something else.

We sit there together, thinking, looking out over the plains far below us. I can feel my eyes getting watery for some reason. Him and me on a mountaintop. I wished I knew what was gonna happen to me.

            After awhile he looks down at my plastic pants. “You look pretty soaked there little pardner; I think maybe it’s time we hit the trail. Your Aunt said we needed to be back by 6 as she didn’t want her dinner ruined.”

            I looked over at him. He had a kinda an apologetic-like look on his face; so I grinned weakly back, “You’re pretty soaked yourself Murph. Looks to me like you’re leaking a bit.”

            “Am I!” he says, and he pokes me in the ribs, “Well hombre, not as soaked as your gonna be.”

            And he grabs me and tosses me up in the air, catches me, swings me around till I scream for mercy. Then he drops me gently on the horse blankets and starts to tickle me. I squeal with laughter and try and get him back. Pretty soon we’re rolling around and getting all dirty.

            Murph looks at me and laughs, pointing at my plastic pants: “Well I’d say you was leaking pretty good yourself judging by all that mud.”

            Sure enough, both of our plastic pants were streaked and smeared with mud. We both laughed. He gave me a hug, and after putting on his shortalls, he goes and saddles the horses while I pack up the remains of our lunch. I put my shirt on, but leave my trousers off accounta all that mud, and besides I kinda liked the idea of riding out of the hills with Murph in just-a diaper and plastic pants. Kinda like a dream I’d had: that I lived on a ranch and rode around everywhere that way: my Dad’s little cowbaby. As we were riding down the trail, I noticed that Uncle Murph kept looking at me and my diapers. “Uncle Murph, why do you like looking at me in my diapers so much?”

            Murph rode on a while, not saying much, and then he say’s to me, “Well Timmy, one reason is that I always wanted to be a little boy whose parents let him wear diapers. When I look at you, I like to imagine it’s me, and besides, I enjoy being able to let you wear them. I guess when you spend a lot of your life wishing to be a kid in diapers, actually seeing one is a real treat.”

            “But how come George got all excited when he saw me wearing diapers. He had a real tent in his pants,” I laughed. I kinda thought - - -, well - - -.”

            “It’s true, Timmy, when a diaperboy wears diapers, it’s not just clothing, it’s more than that. It’s sexually exciting a lot of the time too. Most diaper boys feel they belong in diapers. That it’s the way they’re supposed to be. Makes them happy in many ways, and one of those ways is sexual. Thinking of being a little boy in diapers gets a lot of guys pretty excited that way, and seeing a real boy in diapers is awful stimulating.”

            “Uh-huh.” Murph’s answer sounded pretty good to me, but I couldn’t help wonder if maybe there was something more to it. Like old Mr. McGiver. Uncle Murph didn’t say much more, he just rode along quiet, like something was troubling him.

            As we were coming down the trail to the ranch I hear a voice behind me.

            “Nice pants Timmy!”

            Sally storms by me on her pony racing for the house.

            ‘No way!’ I says to myself and digs in my heels and takes after her. Fore long, we’re neck and neck. Just like her though after I beats her fair and square, to tell me:

            “Just had to let the little cowbaby win!”

            “Yah right!” I stuck my tongue out at her.

            “Baby never gonna be a boy-o.” She chanted.

            “Tom-boy-o never gonna be a girly!” I echoed back.

            She jumps me and we wrestle around in the yard as our dads are riding up. She cheats though and grabs my diapers and pulls them down around my ankles, then yanks them off. As I stand there naked as a jaybird in the yard, she runs around with a war whoop, swinging my diapers in the air like a war trophy. This forces a hasty retreat on my part to the house as behind her dad comes her mother. I run through the screen door, with her careening after me. As it bangs behind me I see all the decorations Aunt Alice and I had made the day before strung around the living room. ‘Happy Birthday Murph’ reads the big banner I’d made and decorated.

            “Now isn’t that the cutest little teenbaby you ever did see!” Shem and Mr. Moore were standing under the banner along with Gus and Aunt Alice waiting for Uncle Murph to come in, “Don’t wallop him too hard with that diaper Sally, you wouldn’t want to bruise the merchandise, dear,” he says seein her fly through the door with my underpinnings swinging from her hand, “that’d be cowbaby abuse.” He looks at me and grins wickedly: “Why you can come on over here sweetheart and hide in old Uncle Shem’s lap from the nasty big girl.” Shem loves to flame.

            “Don’t you torment that boy any more Shem, I think Sally’s doing just fine all by herself.” Mr. Petersen and his wife have come in to the house while Sally is chasing after me round the dining room table. “Murph’s down taking care of the horses, and sent us on up. Doesn’t suspect a thing.”

            “Well I think our boy here ought’a get some party pants on, don’t you?” Aunt Alice reaches out and snags me as I try to dodge a wet diaper heaved at me from across the dining room table. “Sally, run upstairs and get some fresh ones, will you.”

            She grins at me and sticks out her tongue in triumph as she runs up the stairs. Before I know it, there I’m being diapered in front of the crowd, with Sally holding the pins grinning down at me. “Can I put the pins in Aunt Sally, can I?” I’m shaking my head and everyone is laughing.

            “Dear, I think you have more in mind than just pinning the diaper. I don’t think Timmy wants to be your pincushion just yet. You better wait till he’s growed a bit more.”

            So there I was when Uncle Murph comes through the door, yelling surprise with everyone else, and wearing a big white fluffy diaper and giant pins, with a baby blue ‘Happy Birthday Murph’ silk sash tied round me. Uncle Murph’s birthday baby. Murph looks surprised and delighted. I get to bring him his presents, dressed up special as I was for the occasion, and he gives me a hug.” Did you make that sash all by yourself, or did your Aunt help you. I smiled shyly at him, having hoped he’d be pleased at my idea. I wondered most, though, if me being gift wrapped and all, he’d get the point.

            Uncle Murph opened up his other presents one after another. Mr. Moore gave him a bunch of fishing flies, and Shem produced the latest cookbook he’d written. Aunt Alice had a new CD player for him and a copy of the latest Harry Potter book, which was inscribed ‘for both my little boys’. I proudly presented him with a fish carving that I’d made with Gus’s knife, and a lot of help. I was pretty proud of it and he gave me a little hug after he opened it, “I’ll put this in a place of honor over my fly tying desk Timmy.”

            Then Sally comes up. She’s got a big box all wrapped up in that pink paper with the little baby cowboys on it. “Here Uncle Murph, Mom and me we made these special for you.”

            Murph looks at the package and blushes just a bit, knowing he’s gonna find a special new outfit inside. But I can see he’s just as interested as me in finding out what it is. He tears off the paper, and opening the box, pulls out a pair of the neatest dark blue velvet rompers. They have little side tabs with a big blue button on each and “Little Wrangler Ranch” embroidered in light blue thread on the front. Course there is a row of matching light blue snaps in the crotch.

            “These are pretty nice Sally, but aren’t they a little small?”

            The pair Murph was holdin up was my size.

            “Look in the box silly,” Sally grins as everyone laughs, and sure enough Uncle Murph pulls out an identical pair in his size.

            Everyone wants to see us wear em, so Aunt Alice drags us off upstairs, with Sarah (Mrs. Petersen) follow’n behind. When we get to my room, Mrs. Petersen leads me in, while Aunt Alice takes Uncle Murph off to their room. It’s embarrass’n enough having Sally’s mom changing me and dressing me, but she didn’t have to stand in the doorway watching all the time. A fellers gotta have some right to privacy – doesn’t he?

            Mrs. Petersen stands me up after she lets Sally snap up my crotch, “Well aren’t they just the sweetest. Why Timmy I don’t think I’ve ever made a nicer outfit for a teenbaby.”

            “You’ve made these for other kids?”

            “You don’t think you’re the only little cowboy with understanding parents do you Timmy. Now that we advertise on the Internet, we get all kinds of orders for our special clothes in boy sizes. A lot of them come over the phone, and I’ve chatted with quite a few parents.”

            Just then Mom and Uncle Murph come down the hall, and the two of us are marched down in our new party clothes to cut the birthday cake.

            We enter the living room and stand for inspection, while Mr. Petersen takes a whole bunch of photos. “Never know, these are so good we just may have to use them for advertising!”

he’s joking – I think.

 

            “Oh-My!” Shem exclaimed loudly, “Aren’t they the cutest little father-son outfits you ever did see?”

 

            There’s a sudden silence in the room. No one says a word.

 

            “Oh-My! – I mean uncle-son, umm – father-nephew, ah - UNCLE-NEPHEW” Shem exclaims. “Got it right there finally – didn’t I?” But his expression says something else.

 

            I look at Uncle Murph. Uncle Murph looks back at me. “Wha- what?” It’s all I can say.

Uncle Murph looks like he’s about to break into tears. I just stare at him, my eyes opening wide as I ponder his expression.

Finally he says to me in a real quiet voice: “It’s true Timmy. I am your father, but I can’t be your dad – you have to go back, you can’t stay here.”

            “Wha- wha- what!” I stutter, “You’re my dad? How can you be my dad? Mom married your brother. Roy is my dad!”

            “No Timmy, your mother had you six months after I left. Said so in the copy of your birth certificate the Viriginia DCS sent us when they tracked me down. My brother didn’t even know your mother when you were conceived. Besides,” he said, “haven’t you noticed – it isn’t just because we’re dressed alike that we look the same, my brother was my mothers first child – by a black father. I’m your father – there’s no doubt about it.”

            I looked at Aunt Alice. She nodded her head.

            I looked at Uncle Murph, and then I screamed; “Why? Why did you leave me there. It hurt so much. Why? Why don’t you love me? Why can’t I stay here? I never hurt you none! I never did nuthin to you! Why do you hate me! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” I ran at him flailing with my fists. I hit him as hard as I could and I kept doing it as he reached around me with his arms and held me. After awhile I stopped hitting and just sobbed, burying my head in his chest. He just rocked me back and forth – saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

            After awhile he said to me, “Timmy, I love you but I can’t have you.”

            I looked up at him: tears were streaming down his face.

            “Timmy, when you asked me about why I liked to look at you, I didn’t exactly tell you the whole truth. You see I like boys a little too much. I think about doing awful things to you when I look at you sometimes. Things you shouldn’t do with boys. When I go into my office and lock the door, I look at pictures on the Internet of boys. Not just boys in diapers, but other pictures. Pictures that make me ashamed of myself, but I can’t stop. That’s why Aunt Alice always changes your diapers or does your bath. It’s why I never do. I think you’re so beautiful, so wonderful, it scares me. Timmy, I could never bear it if I hurt you – that’s why you can’t stay here – cause I might hurt the thing I love most in the world.”

“I never knew I had a son, your Mom never told me she was pregnant, and I never heard or saw from her or my brother again after I left San Francisco – never wanted to. So I never even knew you existed. It wasn’t till the Virginia DCS tracked me down through the Marine Corp, that I heard. They thought I was your Uncle, but when I saw your photo and your birth certificate, I knew. Your Aunt Alice did too. It took her 6 months to convince me to let them send you here. She said she’d always wanted to have children, and that this was her last chance. I didn’t want to do it, but she said she’d leave if I didn’t, so now you’re here. And now I love you and can’t have you. We moved back here not just because I wanted to, but because it was far from anywhere I would have much contact with kids. I love this place, and we chose it because of our friends here, but it was also a place to keep myself away from the little guys I was afraid I’d love too much.”

Uncle Murph looked down at me and gripped me in a hug so tight it made me gasp, then looking around the room, he said, with anger rising in his voice: “And all of you knew this. Everyone of you knows. I’ve never kept it secret. And now look what you’ve done. He’s here, and I can’t bear it cause I love him too much, and I can’t let him stay.”

“You’re wrong Murph.”

It was Mr. Brown.

“We’ve all known you for 20 years, some of us your whole life. We have done things together that would shock a lot of people. Each of us in this room knows the most intimate things, the darkest secrets, and the most hidden thoughts of the other. And Murph, you’re wrong. You’re 43 years old, and in all those 43 years, you’ve never hurt a child in your life. That’s not a child molester, Murph, that’s not even a boylover. Murph, you want to be the boy – not the man when you look at those pictures on the Internet. You dream of the love of a father you never had. Now you think that because of it you can’t give love, natural love, to a boy of your own. You’re ashamed when you look at those pictures, cause you’d never do that to a boy yourself – you’d never do it cause it might hurt him, and cause anytime you get to know a real boy, he’s a special human being – someone you do the best you can by. It’s only in your fantasies that you do the wrong thing – and even then, you wind up either taking care of the kid, or becoming him.”

“Murph, your sister’s boy Mikey was here for a year.” Aunt Alice was speaking now. “He lived with us, and he was just as beautiful a boy as your son. All that while he made moon eyes at you too. He even flirted with you. He would have done anything you asked he wanted a daddy so bad. You could have slept with him. Yet you told me that you couldn’t cause you thought it wasn’t the right thing for him. Murph, you’ve had a couple of other opportunities, I know cause you told me. And each time there was always a reason why it wasn’t right. That’s not going to change for you, even with Timmy living here. He’s your son and you’re never going to do anything to hurt him.”

“We all agree, Murph, we can’t let you send this boy away. He needs you – and you need him.” It was Mrs. Petersen. “Thinking thoughts is not doing them. We all have the dark corners of our souls. Yours are no worse than most, and better’n many. I don’t think you’ve ever hurt anyone intentionally in your whole life. You love your son. That’s all you need to know.”

“He stays Murph!” It was Aunt Alice again. I looked at Murph, pleading with my eyes.”

“He can’t,” Uncle Murph shouted.

There was a silence then in the room, and I spoke into it. “If you sends me back, won’t matter none. If it aint old Mrs. Brown and old Mr. McGiver – it’ll be somebody else. Happens to us foster kids all’a the time. Mr. McGiver, he gives Mrs. Brown money for to send us boys down the street to him. He likes us to take our clothes off for him. Had us do things too. If he liked what we did, then he gave us money. That’s how I got my diaper money. He liked having me watch what he did to the other boys. Said he was gonna do them things to me when I got just a little bigger. He told old Mrs. Brown I was just-about big enough when DCS sent me out here. So it don’t matter much what happens – here or there – it’ll happen just the same ifs I goes back.”

I finished talking. Had my say. Nobody in the room said a word. I think they was shocked.

“You’re never going back Timmy! Never.’

It was Uncle Murph, and he hugged me to him like I was gonna die.

 

Chapter 6 Home

 

            It’s been three years now and I’m gonna be thirteen next month. Murph and Aunt Alice, they adopted me, so now its ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’. I still get to wear diapers every night and most days, exceptin Mom and Dad won’t let me wear em to school. They says I have to learn to be normal-like when necessary and that the diapers and all would be an unnecessary distraction for everyone involved. Murph wasn’t kiddin about that reading business at school and all. They gave me a bunch of tests, and I found myself the only ten year old in second grade at Red Lodge Elementary. Pretty embarrassing and all. Particularly as I wet myself a couple of times in class after being used to wearing diapers all summer. Teacher made me stand up in front of the whole class, with everyone giggling at the big kid with wet pants, and took me off to the office to call Mom to come get me. She came and picked me up, making a nice fuss in the office about maybe I should wear diapers to school and all. I was red as a beet. I know she did it just for the fun of embarrassing me as she’d already told me she wouldn’t let me wear em to school. Didn’t take me long after that to get housebroken again – at least for school.

            What with Dad and Mom coaching me at home, they moved me up to third grade halfway through the school year, and I got to skip fourth grade causa mail summer school that year. So I’m only a year behind Sarah now. She still gives me a hard time whenever about bein in the little kids class and all. She’s says she thought second grade was even better for an ol babypants like me. Actually it was kinda fun – if ya like bein a little kid like me. She invited me to the 8^th grade prom this year – and ya know what. She made wear a diaper under my suit. She thought I’d look cute in the little gray flannel short-short suit and jacket her mom made me for family parties, but Aunt Alice – I mean Mom, vetoed that since it was a school thing. Anyway it did feel kinda neat rubbing up against her during the slow dances in that diaper and all. She’s OK for a Tomboy I guess.

            I ride over to her place regular to play. It’s fun to run around with another kid in my rompers, or just my diapers on hot days. I can tell her Dad really enjoys looking at me too! It still makes me feel good to have Dad-types look at me that way. I get all chilly down my back. I spend the night at her place about every week, and she comes over here a lot too. I still remember the big surprises the first time I stayed over there. Her mom makes designer clothes all right – for big babies, teen toddlers like me, and adult babies too. She has a whole line on the web, and has a bunch of old ladies who sew for her there. They have a lot of fun trying stuff out on me, making me stand around in a new sunsuit or other design and comment on how nicely it shows off ‘the little boy’s diapers’. I still blush a lot, but I love it, and I get to keep a lot of the clothes too!

            Sarah still wets her bed! She wasn’t all that happy to have me know, and tried to sneak off to put on a Goodnight when I stayed over the first time. But after getting her mother to let her diaper me for bed – she thinks it’s really funny how stiff my little cowboy gets when she oils it up too – her mother ratted on her and made her put it on in front of me. She looks pretty cute in a Goodnight! She says she doesn’t really like them, but I wonder – she keeps em on until after breakfast. Course the same rule holds for us boys at her house as at home, and we, her dad and I, both come to breakfast in our wet diapers so the ladies can see how soaked they are. I love eating breakfast in wet diapers that way. Sarah and her mother tease good.

            Speakin of all that, Mom made Murph diaper me at home after I asked her to. Boy he sure looked scared the first time too! His hands was all shakin, and Mom had to make him oil up my little cowboy cause he acted like he’d get burnt if he touched it. I just smiled away all the time at him – happy as a clam in the mud. I really loved the feel of those big strong hands stroking me and rubbing in the oil. It made me feel really little boyish. Now he does it almost everyday. I can tell he loves doing it too. Once in a while he kinda rubs me down there a little long, and sometimes he slides his finger in me a bit when he oils up my crack and balls. I always giggle and wave my feet like a little baby when he does that. Mostly we’re just playin cause I know he really wants to be the little boy – sides even Mom does that to me once in a while too! He never did do any of those other things to me though, and I guess that’s OK cause he’s my Dad. Every now and then though I think about it, and sometimes it makes me get pretty stiff. And I know what he thinks about too, cause I hacked his computer and got into those files of his. He’s right about there bein some pretty bad stuff there.

He did show me all the kid diaper pictures he’d pulled off the net, and now that I have my own computer, I have my own collection too. We made a teenbaby web site for me with my story on it. I get a lot of great feedback, and I have had a lot of fun with the graphics. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me put my own picture up though. They said that you never know whose looking, and we need to be safe. I wasn’t at all happy about that. I guess they was right though in a way. I sent a picture of me in my diapers to another boy on the web cause he promised not to show it to anyone. Boy was Dad mad when he saw it on one of his favorite sites a week later. I got grounded from the computer for a month. But the worst was a kid at school found it and it got all over. I really got teased, even though I told everyone I was dressed like that for a Halloween party. I think everybody knew no normal 11-year old boy woulda picked a costume like that.

After that, we kinda found a compromise. I don’t know why, but I really wanted to put my pictures up, so Sally’s mom suggested that I model stuff for their company site. She pointed out to Mom and Dad that the Real Company had kids modeling diapers on their site doing cute things. So that’s what I’m doin. I get paid for it too. I was amazed when one of the granny types brought her twin grandchildren, Billy and Leslie, in to model also. I’m the oldest since I’m twelve, but they are not far behind at 9. We started out just modeling the diapers and plastic pants, but we now also do onesies and the rompers as well. The outfits come in all sizes, and they really started selling after they put us up on the web. Some of the orders are for real toddlers and little kids too. And yah! Everyone at school knows about it, and we get a lot of teasin, but we don’t mind. We just tell em we make a lot of money doin it. Sides, by now they all pretty much know I like to wear diapers, as I don’t make no big secret of it. Hard to tease a kid about being a big baby wet pants, when he just grins and says “Yah! – and wouldn’t you love to too!” Since I’m good at sports, and don’t rag on others I have a few good friends – though it took a while: including the kid who found the diaper picture of me on the Web. Wasn’t at all surprised when he called me up and asked if he could spend the night. Too bad for him his parents aren’t like mine. He’s scared to tell em. But we have had a lot of fun together when he comes over to my place.

Mom – sometimes I think she’s the devil herself. Every year we take a vacation. Mom likes the big city, and she thinks places like New York and L.A. are swell. All sorts of museums, concerts and cultural stuff. And Dad, he likes to get out into the country – as if we could be more country than we already are. Yellowstone, Grand Tetons - places like that. He even wants to do Alaska. I asked how come I didn’t get to pick once and a while, and they says when I can pay for it – then I can pick it. I said I thought this was pretty unfair. They won’t let kids my age work anyway, and there are a lot of places a kid would like to go that an adult might not want to. Well mom said she could think of a compromise – I could pick a place, long as I agreed to let them dress me anyway they wanted and do as they say when we get there. So I got to see Disney World - in a pinafore, pink corduroy shortalls, a burrette in my hair, and frilly pants. Great! And they brought Sarah along. So they dressed me like a girl, but with heavy diapers of course. They still called me Timmy and Aunt Alice, I mean Mom, made sure that people knew I was a boy. Like sending me into the boys room at MacDonalds in pink, and then explaining I was really a boy when the waitress tried to stop me. And I had to tell everyone I was dressed that way cause I liked it. Mom said pink was really my color it matched my complexion so well.

Still Sarah and I had a pretty neat time in Disney World, even if she did help out with the teasin a bit. I can’t figure out why I like it so much. Anyway, I was glad to get back to my toddler boy clothes, a joke like that can only go so far before it gets boring, and somehow, the world always feel right when I’m wearing my onesie and a wet diaper. The little girl thing – well maybe its alright for some guys, but I told mom once was enough and she agreed. She likes her baby boy more anyway.

 

George showed up that next summer – soon as school was out. He’d written us in advance, and Dad and Mom drove into Red Lodge with me to pick him up. He looked real excited and kind of scared as we drove up and saw him standing in front of the bus station. By the way his trousers looked, he’d come already prepared. There was definitely extra padding there – so I guess that he’d decided to get a jump on his special summer. We all hopped out of the car and walked over to greet him.

“Hello Baby Georgie, we’re happy you’ve come. Timmy is looking forward to having a big baby brother this summer.” Dad said in a voice that I could see sounded like a megaphone to George.

George turned quite crimson. He could see a couple of other passengers looking at us. “He- Hello Mr. Murphy. Hi T-Timmy – how ya doing?”

“We’re just fine; but by the looks of you, I’ll bet you could use a change son, after your big ride on the bus”.

Dad was grinning wickedly and I could see George wanted to sink into the pavement. Now that we were up close it was clear that he had started to leak a bit on the bus. Dad just reached over and took George’s hand and walked him into the station followed by Mom, who had her favorite hamper in her hand. Since it is a small town, the restrooms were one-seaters with sink and toilet all in one. Being a bus station, it was plenty roomy so you could change in there with your luggage. My parents pulled George in and locked the door. They was pretty merciless. George came out looking really sheepish and totally blitzed in a blue denim romper just like the one I was wearing – with the same red snaps in the crotch and very obvious heavy diapers. No more thin depends for Georgie I could see. George was a very boyish 19-year old, blonde and pretty cute in that outfit. He might’a passed for 13 or 14 – but that’s still a long way from a toddler. By this time I was pretty used to wearing what I was- even around town, and seeing as how all the kids at school already knew about the cowbaby at the Little Wrangler ranch, was pretty unconcerned about who saw me. I no longer wore pampers under my rompers to town, preferring the obvious bulk and feel of cloth. So I got quite the giggles at seein George’s expression. Clearly this was a new experience for him.

“Gee Mom, now Georgie’s a little kid just like me!” I said in a loud voice. I could see old Oscar Wimer, who now was now the ticket clerk about to go into fits. Being a close friend of the Petersens, he knew all about us, and Dad had probably clued him in that he was picking George up.

“Mr. Murphy, I hope you didn’t leave that boy’s diaper in the trash can where it’s going to smell up the place.” Mr. Wimer said in his best stern voice, - loud enough for people to hear out the door.”

My dad grins back at him, “Naw Oscar, Alice’s got it in the hamper.”

“Nice outfit son.” Mr. Wimer grins at George, “you look real cute.”

Since George looked like he was ready to faint, we headed out to our truck, George following close behind.

“Bye kids! Stay dry!” I heard Mr. Wimer saying behind us.

Mom made a bit of a show trying to find the keys while George was looking frantically around and trying to put us or the truck between him and all the summer people walking by. He was frantic to get in the truck, when he saw a couple of teenage girls stopping to look at us. Their giggles made him turn even redder before Mom showed a little mercy and let him into the back.

As we drive out of Red Lodge Dad starts explaining George’s duties and the rules of the house. “Well Georgie, we are glad to have you with us for the summer. For the first month, you will be helping out Gus, our hired hand, who will show you the ropes. After he goes off on vacation, you will be filling in for him. That includes taking care of the orchard and the cattle, as well as helping Timmy with the chores. There’s also the other livestock to feed and the horses to groom and exercise. There are a few house rules you’ll have to follow. Mrs. Murphy runs the home, and you have to do what she says. You are expected to help out with the laundry, as you will be making a considerable contribution to it, and you will eat with the family. In fact, we have decided that for the summer we are going to treat you as our nephew. So from now on we’re Uncle Murph, and Aunt Alice. You can wear diapers the whole time, 24/7; but just like Timmy, if you decide to wear them for the day, then you are in them for the next 24 hours – and we decide when you get changed, what you wear, and where you go. Also, no boy changes his own diapers. We will check you during the day, and change you in the morning after breakfast. Only we change Timmy or you. You guys don’t do it for each other unless we give you permission. If you don’t want to wear them for the day, take them off before breakfast – but once you show up for breakfast in your diaper, that’s it for the day. You have a diaper pail with your name on it up in Timmy’s and your room.”

George is round eyed, and I can see the wonder in his eyes. He keeps rubbing his hands over his rompers, as though checking to see if they’re real. “Wow!”

“What do you mean wow?” Aunt Alice says from the front.

“I mean gosh, this is like a dream – a wonderful dream.”

Aunt Alice looks back at him and smiles as we head on down the road.

George looks over at me and says quietly, “Boy I thought I was gonna die at the bus station – your Mom has no mercy, does she?”

“Not much.” I giggle. You should see the things she’s done to me. I got to go to Disneyland last month – as a little girl! In diapers. Mom and Mrs. Petersen had a couple of frocked dresses for me: pink rompers, and maryjane shoes. They even had a two piece bathing suit.”

“Boy – I couldn’t imagine. Do you like dressing up as a girl?”

“No way! It was terrible embarrassin.”

“Couldn’t you just try to pass as a girl, even if it was in diapers.”

“Mom had that all figured out. They kept my hair short, called me Timmy all the time, and would regularly ask if I needed to go potty in the boys room in front of people.”

“You must have hated the whole trip.”

“Well actually it was kinda fun. I guess I like all the attention, and I get this funny shivery feeling all the time when they embarrass me. Anyway they gave the dresses to Sally when I got back. That’s our neighbor’s daughter – she’s my age, but she said they were too young looking for her. I think her Mom sold them to some other mother who wanted to do the same thing to her son.”

“Huh!”

“Oh yah, Mrs. Petersen runs a teenbaby and adult baby clothing company. She gets special orders for kids and adults all the time. She told mom that there are a lot of boys out there who like to be put in dresses.”

“Weird.”

“Yah – but who are we to talk.” I giggled, “Besides, by the end of this summer I’m sure you will be even weirder.”

            As we pull up in front of the ranch house, Mom turns to George, who has been special quiet in the back of the truck, and says, “Welcome home teenbaby”.

George smiles back, and looking next to him at me and my outfit, grins: “Gee it sure is nice to be here!”

Gus comes out to greet us. “Welcome to the Little Wrangler Ranch. Looks like we got us a real cute new cowbaby!”

Gus grins at George and looks him over appraisingly, taking in the full affect of his rompers, padding and all. “That’ll be a great outfit if we just add some cowboy boots and a hat”. Murph, you gonna run him into town for some boots? He’ll need em for riding.

Murph smiled, “Oh he’s going to get the full treatment, Bill and Shem are waiting for him with open arms at the Emporium tomorrow. Alice and Timmy are going to drive him in for some shopping in the afternoon. I’m sure they’ll have lots of fun.”

Remembering my first trip to the Emporium, I can’t help but smile at what is awaiting him there.

It was quite a summer for George. We got along great. He was somewhat surprised the first morning at breakfast when he found Dad waiting for us also in wet diapers. Dad just grinned at him. George and Gus got along like a house-a-fire. I felt a little miffed at all the attention Gus gave him, and George seemed to follow him around with little puppy eyes. After about a week, Gus took over most of George’s diaper changes - something Gus wasn’t allowed to do for me. After awhile, it was clear Gus had dropped his vacation plans. When I asked Dad how come Gus could change George’s diapers and not mine, he said: ‘Because George is 19, of legal age, and asked him to’. I told him I thought it wasn’t fair. Gus was paying a lot more attention to George than me – I kinda felt left out a lot of the time. It was like they had a special club or something – and I wasn’t invited. That’s when Dad sat me down and gave me a little ‘birds and the bees’ talk. Not about women and all that – about men who liked each other.

“Timmy, Gus came to live with us cause he liked boys a bit too much too. He got arrested for child molestation down in Wyoming and had to do a year in jail for it. So he moved in here as it was far from temptation, and as folks around here don’t know much about him. Don’t worry, Gus doesn’t mess with little kids, he gets a crush on young adults like George. The ‘child’ he molested was a 17-year-old runaway he thought was 18. He took the kid in off the streets and gave him a place to stay, and after awhile things just developed until a neighbor reported strange goings-on to the police. Seems Gus was keeping him in diapers all the time, taking him out in public and the like. The kid turned out to have been a latent teenbaby. One thing led to another and a local homophobic prosecutor nailed him. Pretty much wrecked the kid’s life – not to mention Gus’s. That’s why Gus isn’t allowed to change your diapers, and why we got so mad when we found you coming out of the hills with him in wet pants. We thought he’d been playing funny games with you. He has a fondness for kids in wet pants, and we weren’t sure what he was up to.

Anyways, Gus was an old friend from the Marines – he was one of the Daddy-types hanging around our crowd. Mel and I were a bit older than him, so we were just friends with common interests, but he had a couple of younger marines who were into humiliation and diapers, and he was only too happy to oblige.”

I asked Dad what he meant by a Daddy type. I mean I have a Dad an all that. How could Gus be a Daddy to a bunch of guys.

“Well, Timmy, you know how much you wanted a Dad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well there are a lot of guys who grow up not getting much attention from their fathers or don’t even have a father. A lot of them spend a lot of time looking to fill that void in their lives, and as they grow older, find that they are looking for an older man for a lover. With adult babies, it’s just like that, except there are diapers involved and the younger man plays the role of a diaperboy. A lot of the time sex is involved as well. Truth is, sometimes your Mom sends me over to Bill Moore for a dose of Daddying. Same with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Mel. Mr. Moore was Bill’s diaper daddy all through their teen years and still fills that roll for him as well.”

“You don’t have sex with him do you? I mean like old Mr. McGiver did with us boys?”

“That too Timmy. My Dad was either beating me up or missing in action. So I like to go out occasionally and play the very loving father-boy routine with Mr. Moore and Shem. Actually Shem also plays the boy, but without the diaper routine.”

I was bug-eyed. “Does Mom know?”

“Course she does – I was Mr. Moore’s diaperboy when she met me. What she didn’t know, your mother filled her in on anyway. She doesn’t mind at all. Says it gives her a break from my diapers and all. When I come back, she tells me I’m always a better lover anyway. You know, anything is all right in a marriage as long as both partners know what’s going on and are OK with it. Your Mom and me have our own special relationship and it works. Both of us are very happy.”

“So if you go to Mr. Moore, why can’t I hang out with Gus like George?”

“Cause you, young man, are not 18, not legal, and it would not necessarily be a good thing for either of you – if he was really interested. Gus prefers older men than you. He really doesn’t want to mess around with boys – except he enjoys seeing them in wet pants and diapers and thinking about how they will look as they get older. Besides, do you really want another Daddy? Particularly that kind of Daddy? Is that the kind of Daddy you want me to be?”

I look at my father. I don’t think I have seen him so serious since he told me he was my Dad. I didn’t say anything for a long while, and then said, “Sometimes I think about what old Mr. McGiver did to the other boys, and my little cowboy kinda gets stiff and funny feeling. You know. But I don’t really think that’s what I want. I like having a real daddy, and I don’t think real daddies do those things with their sons.”

“Neither do I. Sometimes I have those thoughts too son. Sometimes you look a little too cute – I think. But I guess I’ve figured out that what I want to be is a real dad too. And I am pretty happy with my son, and being your dad.”

He gave me a big hug.

“I suspect that you are going to find that you have a room all to yourself again pretty soon. Looks to me like they are just trying to figure out how to ask us if they can move in together. I haven’t seen Gus look that happy the whole 5 years he’s been here. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot of George during college vacations too. Your Mom and I have already started planning a coming-out party for George.”

“A coming out party?”

“Well son, when a young man discovers he’s gay, and is finally willing to admit it to himself and his friends, its become a tradition to welcome him to his new life with a party celebrating the event. It usually is a life transforming event since it means throwing away a lot of guilt and anger and accepting oneself, - and learning to take the acceptance of others.”

“You think George is gay? He sure hasn’t made any moves at me.”

“Gays don’t go after boys anymore than straights, Timmy. George is interested in an older man for a lover – not a kid. There are a lot of AB’s who also look for daddies like your Pop, but are still basically straight, and have no interest in men other than as a daddy type for role playing. I like Mr. Moore and Shem, but I want to live with and love your mother.”

“Dad – would you be surprised if I told you I think this is all pretty confusing?”

 

Georgie, as we called him, took off at the end of the summer – with a suitcase of new clothes he bought from the Petersens – and a new home with Gus to come back to. The party was a great success, with Mr. Moore and Shem, as well as the Petersens and some other people who were friends of Mr. Moore. Turns out Dad was right. George was gay. At least for now.

 

That wasn’t the big news for the summer though. That was when they told me my sister Sarah was going to be born. Dad and Mom had never tried to make a baby, cause he was scared about how he would behave around a little boy. Having me around changed his mind, and Mom got pregnant a couple of months before Georgie came. Naturally, Dad hadn’t even thought about having a girl. He was pretty surprised at the results of the amniocentesis – and wasn’t at all sure what he was going to do with little Sarah (named for Mrs. Petersen) when she came. Sarah’s two years old now, and to my disgust, her godmother and namesake produced matching baby outfits for us. Mom thought having the two of us dressed the same would be fun, but pink rompers are definitely not my thing, so we settled on a uni-sex look for matching baby outfits. Shem has the best time teasing me at family parties, and Sally gives me no end of grief about how adorable we look. I swear she’s just like Mom. Mom says I better get used to it. It’s fun though having all three of us diaper kids in bed with Mom. Sarah wears plastic pants and cloth diapers just like ours. Somehow, seeing a real toddler running around in pants just like mine makes them feel all the better. She always pats Dads and my diapered fannies when we are all snuggling together. Mom says her first words were ‘Timmy’s wet’ – but I’m pretty sure she’s just kidding me. Anyway, Dad spoils her bad! And I thought he wanted another son. Course I’m kinda crazy about her myself. Mom says we’re gonna spoil her rotten.

 

So the teasin, and the fun has continued for these three years, and I can say I’m pretty happy. I don’t suppose anyone would call me a normal boy, but somehow I think I really am. I mean I like baseball and fish’n and all that boy stuff. I’m not too keen on school, though some of its alright. I like Zane Grey and science fiction books. I love Harry Potter and Star Wars. I gotta few friends and a few enemies. But most of all I got a great set of parents! I guess it’s what Mom says: “For every pot, there is a lid that fits just right.” I never thought I’d have a home – but here I am.

 

Chapter 6 Home

 

            It’s been three years now and I’m gonna be thirteen next month. Murph and Aunt Alice, they adopted me, so now its ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’. I still get to wear diapers every night and most days, exceptin Mom and Dad won’t let me wear em to school. They says I have to learn to be normal-like when necessary and that the diapers and all would be an unnecessary distraction for everyone involved. Murph wasn’t kiddin about that reading business at school and all. They gave me a bunch of tests, and I found myself the only ten year old in second grade at Red Lodge Elementary. Pretty embarrassing and all. Particularly as I wet myself a couple of times in class after being used to wearing diapers all summer. Teacher made me stand up in front of the whole class, with everyone giggling at the big kid with wet pants, and took me off to the office to call Mom to come get me. She came and picked me up, making a nice fuss in the office about maybe I should wear diapers to school and all. I was red as a beet. I know she did it just for the fun of embarrassing me as she’d already told me she wouldn’t let me wear em to school. Didn’t take me long after that to get housebroken again – at least for school.

            What with Dad and Mom coaching me at home, they moved me up to third grade halfway through the school year, and I got to skip fourth grade causa mail summer school that year. So I’m only a year behind Sarah now. She still gives me a hard time whenever about bein in the little kids class and all. She’s says she thought second grade was even better for an ol babypants like me. Actually it was kinda fun – if ya like bein a little kid like me. She invited me to the 8^th grade prom this year – and ya know what. She made wear a diaper under my suit. She thought I’d look cute in the little gray flannel short-short suit and jacket her mom made me for family parties, but Aunt Alice – I mean Mom, vetoed that since it was a school thing. Anyway it did feel kinda neat rubbing up against her during the slow dances in that diaper and all. She’s OK for a Tomboy I guess.

            I ride over to her place regular to play. It’s fun to run around with another kid in my rompers, or just my diapers on hot days. I can tell her Dad really enjoys looking at me too! It still makes me feel good to have Dad-types look at me that way. I get all chilly down my back. I spend the night at her place about every week, and she comes over here a lot too. I still remember the big surprises the first time I stayed over there. Her mom makes designer clothes all right – for big babies, teen toddlers like me, and adult babies too. She has a whole line on the web, and has a bunch of old ladies who sew for her there. They have a lot of fun trying stuff out on me, making me stand around in a new sunsuit or other design and comment on how nicely it shows off ‘the little boy’s diapers’. I still blush a lot, but I love it, and I get to keep a lot of the clothes too!

            Sarah still wets her bed! She wasn’t all that happy to have me know, and tried to sneak off to put on a Goodnight when I stayed over the first time. But after getting her mother to let her diaper me for bed – she thinks it’s really funny how stiff my little cowboy gets when she oils it up too – her mother ratted on her and made her put it on in front of me. She looks pretty cute in a Goodnight! She says she doesn’t really like them, but I wonder – she keeps em on until after breakfast. Course the same rule holds for us boys at her house as at home, and we, her dad and I, both come to breakfast in our wet diapers so the ladies can see how soaked they are. I love eating breakfast in wet diapers that way. Sarah and her mother tease good.

            Speakin of all that, Mom made Murph diaper me at home after I asked her to. Boy he sure looked scared the first time too! His hands was all shakin, and Mom had to make him oil up my little cowboy cause he acted like he’d get burnt if he touched it. I just smiled away all the time at him – happy as a clam in the mud. I really loved the feel of those big strong hands stroking me and rubbing in the oil. It made me feel really little boyish. Now he does it almost everyday. I can tell he loves doing it too. Once in a while he kinda rubs me down there a little long, and sometimes he slides his finger in me a bit when he oils up my crack and balls. I always giggle and wave my feet like a little baby when he does that. Mostly we’re just playin cause I know he really wants to be the little boy – sides even Mom does that to me once in a while too! He never did do any of those other things to me though, and I guess that’s OK cause he’s my Dad. Every now and then though I think about it, and sometimes it makes me get pretty stiff. And I know what he thinks about too, cause I hacked his computer and got into those files of his. He’s right about there bein some pretty bad stuff there.

He did show me all the kid diaper pictures he’d pulled off the net, and now that I have my own computer, I have my own collection too. We made a teenbaby web site for me with my story on it. I get a lot of great feedback, and I have had a lot of fun with the graphics. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me put my own picture up though. They said that you never know whose looking, and we need to be safe. I wasn’t at all happy about that. I guess they was right though in a way. I sent a picture of me in my diapers to another boy on the web cause he promised not to show it to anyone. Boy was Dad mad when he saw it on one of his favorite sites a week later. I got grounded from the computer for a month. But the worst was a kid at school found it and it got all over. I really got teased, even though I told everyone I was dressed like that for a Halloween party. I think everybody knew no normal 11-year old boy woulda picked a costume like that.

After that, we kinda found a compromise. I don’t know why, but I really wanted to put my pictures up, so Sally’s mom suggested that I model stuff for their company site. She pointed out to Mom and Dad that the Real Company had kids modeling diapers on their site doing cute things. So that’s what I’m doin. I get paid for it too. I was amazed when one of the granny types brought her twin grandchildren, Billy and Leslie, in to model also. I’m the oldest since I’m twelve, but they are not far behind at 9. We started out just modeling the diapers and plastic pants, but we now also do onesies and the rompers as well. The outfits come in all sizes, and they really started selling after they put us up on the web. Some of the orders are for real toddlers and little kids too. And yah! Everyone at school knows about it, and we get a lot of teasin, but we don’t mind. We just tell em we make a lot of money doin it. Sides, by now they all pretty much know I like to wear diapers, as I don’t make no big secret of it. Hard to tease a kid about being a big baby wet pants, when he just grins and says “Yah! – and wouldn’t you love to too!” Since I’m good at sports, and don’t rag on others I have a few good friends – though it took a while: including the kid who found the diaper picture of me on the Web. Wasn’t at all surprised when he called me up and asked if he could spend the night. Too bad for him his parents aren’t like mine. He’s scared to tell em. But we have had a lot of fun together when he comes over to my place.

Mom – sometimes I think she’s the devil herself. Every year we take a vacation. Mom likes the big city, and she thinks places like New York and L.A. are swell. All sorts of museums, concerts and cultural stuff. And Dad, he likes to get out into the country – as if we could be more country than we already are. Yellowstone, Grand Tetons - places like that. He even wants to do Alaska. I asked how come I didn’t get to pick once and a while, and they says when I can pay for it – then I can pick it. I said I thought this was pretty unfair. They won’t let kids my age work anyway, and there are a lot of places a kid would like to go that an adult might not want to. Well mom said she could think of a compromise – I could pick a place, long as I agreed to let them dress me anyway they wanted and do as they say when we get there. So I got to see Disney World - in a pinafore, pink corduroy shortalls, a burrette in my hair, and frilly pants. Great! And they brought Sarah along. So they dressed me like a girl, but with heavy diapers of course. They still called me Timmy and Aunt Alice, I mean Mom, made sure that people knew I was a boy. Like sending me into the boys room at MacDonalds in pink, and then explaining I was really a boy when the waitress tried to stop me. And I had to tell everyone I was dressed that way cause I liked it. Mom said pink was really my color it matched my complexion so well.

Still Sarah and I had a pretty neat time in Disney World, even if she did help out with the teasin a bit. I can’t figure out why I like it so much. Anyway, I was glad to get back to my toddler boy clothes, a joke like that can only go so far before it gets boring, and somehow, the world always feel right when I’m wearing my onesie and a wet diaper. The little girl thing – well maybe its alright for some guys, but I told mom once was enough and she agreed. She likes her baby boy more anyway.

            George showed up that next summer – soon as school was out. He’d written us in advance, and Dad and Mom drove into Red Lodge with me to pick him up. He looked real excited and kind of scared as we drove up and saw him standing in front of the bus station. By the way his trousers looked, he’d come already prepared. There was definitely extra padding there – so I guess that he’d decided to get a jump on his special summer. We all hopped out of the car and walked over to greet him.

“Hello Baby Georgie, we’re happy you’ve come. Timmy is looking forward to having a big baby brother this summer.” Dad said in a voice that I could see sounded like a megaphone to George.

George turned quite crimson. He could see a couple of other passengers looking at us. “He- Hello Mr. Murphy. Hi T-Timmy – how ya doing?”

“We’re just fine; but by the looks of you, I’ll bet you could use a change son, after your big ride on the bus”.

Dad was grinning wickedly and I could see George wanted to sink into the pavement. Now that we were up close it was clear that he had started to leak a bit on the bus. Dad just reached over and took George’s hand and walked him into the station followed by Mom, who had her favorite hamper in her hand. Since it is a small town, the restrooms were one-seaters with sink and toilet all in one. Being a bus station, it was plenty roomy so you could change in there with your luggage. My parents pulled George in and locked the door. They was pretty merciless. George came out looking really sheepish and totally blitzed in a blue denim romper just like the one I was wearing – with the same red snaps in the crotch and very obvious heavy diapers. No more thin depends for Georgie I could see. George was a very boyish 19-year old, blonde and pretty cute in that outfit. He might’a passed for 13 or 14 – but that’s still a long way from a toddler. By this time I was pretty used to wearing what I was- even around town, and seeing as how all the kids at school already knew about the cowbaby at the Little Wrangler ranch, was pretty unconcerned about who saw me. I no longer wore pampers under my rompers to town, preferring the obvious bulk and feel of cloth. So I got quite the giggles at seein George’s expression. Clearly this was a new experience for him.

“Gee Mom, now Georgie’s a little kid just like me!” I said in a loud voice. I could see old Oscar Wimer, who now was now the ticket clerk about to go into fits. Being a close friend of the Petersens, he knew all about us, and Dad had probably clued him in that he was picking George up.

“Mr. Murphy, I hope you didn’t leave that boy’s diaper in the trash can where it’s going to smell up the place.” Mr. Wimer said in his best stern voice, - loud enough for people to hear out the door.”

My dad grins back at him, “Naw Oscar, Alice’s got it in the hamper.”

“Nice outfit son.” Mr. Wimer grins at George, “you look real cute.”

Since George looked like he was ready to faint, we headed out to our truck, George following close behind.

“Bye kids! Stay dry!” I heard Mr. Wimer saying behind us.

Mom made a bit of a show trying to find the keys while George was looking frantically around and trying to put us or the truck between him and all the summer people walking by. He was frantic to get in the truck, when he saw a couple of teenage girls stopping to look at us. Their giggles made him turn even redder before Mom showed a little mercy and let him into the back.

As we drive out of Red Lodge Dad starts explaining George’s duties and the rules of the house. “Well Georgie, we are glad to have you with us for the summer. For the first month, you will be helping out Gus, our hired hand, who will show you the ropes. After he goes off on vacation, you will be filling in for him. That includes taking care of the orchard and the cattle, as well as helping Timmy with the chores. There’s also the other livestock to feed and the horses to groom and exercise. There are a few house rules you’ll have to follow. Mrs. Murphy runs the home, and you have to do what she says. You are expected to help out with the laundry, as you will be making a considerable contribution to it, and you will eat with the family. In fact, we have decided that for the summer we are going to treat you as our nephew. So from now on we’re Uncle Murph, and Aunt Alice. You can wear diapers the whole time, 24/7; but just like Timmy, if you decide to wear them for the day, then you are in them for the next 24 hours – and we decide when you get changed, what you wear, and where you go. Also, no boy changes his own diapers. We will check you during the day, and change you in the morning after breakfast. Only we change Timmy or you. You guys don’t do it for each other unless we give you permission. If you don’t want to wear them for the day, take them off before breakfast – but once you show up for breakfast in your diaper, that’s it for the day. You have a diaper pail with your name on it up in Timmy’s and your room.”

George is round eyed, and I can see the wonder in his eyes. He keeps rubbing his hands over his rompers, as though checking to see if they’re real. “Wow!”

“What do you mean wow?” Aunt Alice says from the front.

“I mean gosh, this is like a dream – a wonderful dream.”

Aunt Alice looks back at him and smiles as we head on down the road.

George looks over at me and says quietly, “Boy I thought I was gonna die at the bus station – your Mom has no mercy, does she?”

“Not much.” I giggle. You should see the things she’s done to me. I got to go to Disneyland last month – as a little girl! In diapers. Mom and Mrs. Petersen had a couple of frocked dresses for me: pink rompers, and maryjane shoes. They even had a two piece bathing suit.”

“Boy – I couldn’t imagine. Do you like dressing up as a girl?”

“No way! It was terrible embarrassin.”

“Couldn’t you just try to pass as a girl, even if it was in diapers.”

“Mom had that all figured out. They kept my hair short, called me Timmy all the time, and would regularly ask if I needed to go potty in the boys room in front of people.”

“You must have hated the whole trip.”

“Well actually it was kinda fun. I guess I like all the attention, and I get this funny shivery feeling all the time when they embarrass me. Anyway they gave the dresses to Sally when I got back. That’s our neighbor’s daughter – she’s my age, but she said they were too young looking for her. I think her Mom sold them to some other mother who wanted to do the same thing to her son.”

“Huh!”

“Oh yah, Mrs. Petersen runs a teenbaby and adult baby clothing company. She gets special orders for kids and adults all the time. She told mom that there are a lot of boys out there who like to be put in dresses.”

“Weird.”

“Yah – but who are we to talk.” I giggled, “Besides, by the end of this summer I’m sure you will be even weirder.”

            As we pull up in front of the ranch house, Mom turns to George, who has been special quiet in the back of the truck, and says, “Welcome home teenbaby”.

George smiles back, and looking next to him at me and my outfit, grins: “Gee it sure is nice to be here!”

Gus comes out to greet us. “Welcome to the Little Wrangler Ranch. Looks like we got us a real cute new cowbaby!”

Gus grins at George and looks him over appraisingly, taking in the full affect of his rompers, padding and all. “That’ll be a great outfit if we just add some cowboy boots and a hat”. Murph, you gonna run him into town for some boots? He’ll need em for riding.

Murph smiled, “Oh he’s going to get the full treatment, Bill and Shem are waiting for him with open arms at the Emporium tomorrow. Alice and Timmy are going to drive him in for some shopping in the afternoon. I’m sure they’ll have lots of fun.”

Remembering my first trip to the Emporium, I can’t help but smile at what is awaiting him there.

It was quite a summer for George. We got along great. He was somewhat surprised the first morning at breakfast when he found Dad waiting for us also in wet diapers. Dad just grinned at him. George and Gus got along like a house-a-fire. I felt a little miffed at all the attention Gus gave him, and George seemed to follow him around with little puppy eyes. After about a week, Gus took over most of George’s diaper changes - something Gus wasn’t allowed to do for me. After awhile, it was clear Gus had dropped his vacation plans. When I asked Dad how come Gus could change George’s diapers and not mine, he said: ‘Because George is 19, of legal age, and asked him to’. I told him I thought it wasn’t fair. Gus was paying a lot more attention to George than me – I kinda felt left out a lot of the time. It was like they had a special club or something – and I wasn’t invited. That’s when Dad sat me down and gave me a little ‘birds and the bees’ talk. Not about women and all that – about men who liked each other.

“Timmy, Gus came to live with us cause he liked boys a bit too much too. He got arrested for child molestation down in Wyoming and had to do a year in jail for it. So he moved in here as it was far from temptation, and as folks around here don’t know much about him. Don’t worry, Gus doesn’t mess with little kids, he gets a crush on young adults like George. The ‘child’ he molested was a 17-year-old runaway he thought was 18. He took the kid in off the streets and gave him a place to stay, and after awhile things just developed until a neighbor reported strange goings-on to the police. Seems Gus was keeping him in diapers all the time, taking him out in public and the like. The kid turned out to have been a latent teenbaby. One thing led to another and a local homophobic prosecutor nailed him. Pretty much wrecked the kid’s life – not to mention Gus’s. That’s why Gus isn’t allowed to change your diapers, and why we got so mad when we found you coming out of the hills with him in wet pants. We thought he’d been playing funny games with you. He has a fondness for kids in wet pants, and we weren’t sure what he was up to.

Anyways, Gus was an old friend from the Marines – he was one of the Daddy-types hanging around our crowd. Mel and I were a bit older than him, so we were just friends with common interests, but he had a couple of younger marines who were into humiliation and diapers, and he was only too happy to oblige.”

I asked Dad what he meant by a Daddy type. I mean I have a Dad an all that. How could Gus be a Daddy to a bunch of guys.

“Well, Timmy, you know how much you wanted a Dad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well there are a lot of guys who grow up not getting much attention from their fathers or don’t even have a father. A lot of them spend a lot of time looking to fill that void in their lives, and as they grow older, find that they are looking for an older man for a lover. With adult babies, it’s just like that, except there are diapers involved and the younger man plays the role of a diaperboy. A lot of the time sex is involved as well. Truth is, sometimes your Mom sends me over to Bill Moore for a dose of Daddying. Same with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Mel. Mr. Moore was Bill’s diaper daddy all through their teen years and still fills that roll for him as well.”

“You don’t have sex with him do you? I mean like old Mr. McGiver did with us boys?”

“That too Timmy. My Dad was either beating me up or missing in action. So I like to go out occasionally and play the very loving father-boy routine with Mr. Moore and Shem. Actually Shem also plays the boy, but without the diaper routine.”

I was bug-eyed. “Does Mom know?”

“Course she does – I was Mr. Moore’s diaperboy when she met me. What she didn’t know, your mother filled her in on anyway. She doesn’t mind at all. Says it gives her a break from my diapers and all. When I come back, she tells me I’m always a better lover anyway. You know, anything is all right in a marriage as long as both partners know what’s going on and are OK with it. Your Mom and me have our own special relationship and it works. Both of us are very happy.”

“So if you go to Mr. Moore, why can’t I hang out with Gus like George?”

“Cause you, young man, are not 18, not legal, and it would not necessarily be a good thing for either of you – if he was really interested. Gus prefers older men than you. He really doesn’t want to mess around with boys – except he enjoys seeing them in wet pants and diapers and thinking about how they will look as they get older. Besides, do you really want another Daddy? Particularly that kind of Daddy? Is that the kind of Daddy you want me to be?”

I look at my father. I don’t think I have seen him so serious since he told me he was my Dad. I didn’t say anything for a long while, and then said, “Sometimes I think about what old Mr. McGiver did to the other boys, and my little cowboy kinda gets stiff and funny feeling. You know. But I don’t really think that’s what I want. I like having a real daddy, and I don’t think real daddies do those things with their sons.”

“Neither do I. Sometimes I have those thoughts too son. Sometimes you look a little too cute – I think. But I guess I’ve figured out that what I want to be is a real dad too. And I am pretty happy with my son, and being your dad.”

He gave me a big hug.

“I suspect that you are going to find that you have a room all to yourself again pretty soon. Looks to me like they are just trying to figure out how to ask us if they can move in together. I haven’t seen Gus look that happy the whole 5 years he’s been here. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot of George during college vacations too. Your Mom and I have already started planning a coming-out party for George.”

“A coming out party?”

“Well son, when a young man discovers he’s gay, and is finally willing to admit it to himself and his friends, its become a tradition to welcome him to his new life with a party celebrating the event. It usually is a life transforming event since it means throwing away a lot of guilt and anger and accepting oneself, - and learning to take the acceptance of others.”

“You think George is gay? He sure hasn’t made any moves at me.”

“Gays don’t go after boys anymore than straights, Timmy. George is interested in an older man for a lover – not a kid. There are a lot of AB’s who also look for daddies like your Pop, but are still basically straight, and have no interest in men other than as a daddy type for role playing. I like Mr. Moore and Shem, but I want to live with and love your mother.”

“Dad – would you be surprised if I told you I think this is all pretty confusing?”

 

Georgie, as we called him, took off at the end of the summer – with a suitcase of new clothes he bought from the Petersens – and a new home with Gus to come back to. The party was a great success, with Mr. Moore and Shem, as well as the Petersens and some other people who were friends of Mr. Moore. Turns out Dad was right. George was gay. At least for now.

 

That wasn’t the big news for the summer though. That was when they told me my sister Sarah was going to be born. Dad and Mom had never tried to make a baby, cause he was scared about how he would behave around a little boy. Having me around changed his mind, and Mom got pregnant a couple of months before Georgie came. Naturally, Dad hadn’t even thought about having a girl. He was pretty surprised at the results of the amniocentesis – and wasn’t at all sure what he was going to do with little Sarah (named for Mrs. Petersen) when she came. Sarah’s two years old now, and to my disgust, her godmother and namesake produced matching baby outfits for us. Mom thought having the two of us dressed the same would be fun, but pink rompers are definitely not my thing, so we settled on a uni-sex look for matching baby outfits. Shem has the best time teasing me at family parties, and Sally gives me no end of grief about how adorable we look. I swear she’s just like Mom. Mom says I better get used to it. It’s fun though having all three of us diaper kids in bed with Mom. Sarah wears plastic pants and cloth diapers just like ours. Somehow, seeing a real toddler running around in pants just like mine makes them feel all the better. She always pats Dads and my diapered fannies when we are all snuggling together. Mom says her first words were ‘Timmy’s wet’ – but I’m pretty sure she’s just kidding me. Anyway, Dad spoils her bad! And I thought he wanted another son. Course I’m kinda crazy about her myself. Mom says we’re gonna spoil her rotten.

 

So the teasin, and the fun has continued for these three years, and I can say I’m pretty happy. I don’t suppose anyone would call me a normal boy, but somehow I think I really am. I mean I like baseball and fish’n and all that boy stuff. I’m not too keen on school, though some of its alright. I like Zane Grey and science fiction books. I love Harry Potter and Star Wars. I gotta few friends and a few enemies. But most of all I got a great set of parents! I guess it’s what Mom says: “For every pot, there is a lid that fits just right.” I never thought I’d have a home – but here I am.