PREP SCHOOL ----------- Chapter One I stood in the doorway of the great hall next to matron and waved goodbye to my mother and father. I was 7 1/2 years old and had just been entered into St. Joseph's Preparatory School by my parents while my father and mother went to Japan for 2 years. They had done everything possible to prepare me for this for the last six weeks since my father had heard of his promotion within the company. We had all come to St. Joseph's together to view it, been shown around, had tea with the headmistress and all the things you do when choosing a place to dump your only child, but all I really wanted was to cuddle up to my mummy at home. As they pulled out of the driveway the matron used her hanky to wipe my tears away and walked me back towards the room where we had left my suitcase. She swung the door to the room open. This was the reason why I liked this school more than the others we had seen. The room was neat and comfortable with two beds, a desk, TV set and wardrobes. There was a door to the bathroom which was shared by the room next door. The matron walked over to my suitcase, picked it up and turned around with me still holding her hand. "It will be a long while before you get to stay in this room," she said. We walked back along the passage way and up another flight of stairs then along another passage until we arrived at another door. The matron swung it open and I followed her in. The room had six beds in it with bedside tables and six small wardrobes but nothing else. Along one end were 3 doors. The matron walked over to one of the beds and placed my suitcase on it. "This will be your bed," she announced. "This is where all our boys start off." Then she undid my suitcase and started to go through the new things my mother had bought for me. "Lets just sort through this and take out the things you need," she said. She started to take out my new underpants, socks, pyjamas and shirts. She found Arnold, my teddy and put him to one side along with my toothbrush and a photo of my parents and put the rest of my things, including all my clothes, back in the case. "We will put the case in the storeroom for when you need it," she said. "While you are here you will wear only school clothes." I didn't understand, but it didn't matter to me as long as I had Arnold. Then she said we would go down for tea with the other boys and she would show me around while they were doing prep after tea. After we had juice and sandwiches in the dining room the matron took me back to the dormitory we had been in. She showed me through two of the doors at the end of the room. One was a bathroom with a huge bath tub like at a football stadium and three showers. It also had toilets and sinks with mirrors. The other room, she explained, was a changing room where we would go to get dressed. It had several large drawers and cupboards and a few other things that I did not recognize. It looked like a doctor's room, I thought. As we went back into the dormitory some of the other boys appeared. They were all dressed in the same uniform of short grey trousers, white shirt with school tie, blue pull-over and black shoes, grey socks. The matron told them all to come over and meet their new classmate, which they all did. She introduced them all to me and me to them. Then she announced that they should all get changed for play time since it was such a nice day. All the boys started to undress and put away their clothes. The matron suggested I should do the same so that I could play with them and the matron could put my clothes away. As I started to undress, not really knowing what was going on, I watched the boy next to me as he took of his sweater and folded it carefully, then his tie which he put away. He took off his shirt and placed it on his bed and then slipped of his shoes and finally, his shorts. It was as he was putting his shorts away that I realised he was not wearing underpants like the cotton ones my mother had bought for me, but his appeared to be made of plastic. All the boys than went into the changing room while wearing only their pants and socks. The matron scowled at me and helped me to undress down to my pants so that I could join the other boys. We both went in to the room and found the other boys lined up waiting for the matron. She stood me at the end of the line and went to the front. I noticed that even though some of the boys were older all were wearing the same plastic underpants. The first boy pulled down his pants, stepped out of them and passed them to the matron. She turned them inside out as we all looked on, I could now see that these pants were lined with several layers of cloth. When she could see that the pants were dry she gave the boy a clean pair and the next boy took his pants off while the first slipped his on. Again the second was dry and the third, but the fourth boy was not so happy to remove his pants. The matron gave him a stern look and he slowly lowered his pants to the floor. It was obvious straight away that the pants were soaking wet. The matron stood the boy to one side as the fifth boy dropped his pants. His pants were dry but as he dropped them there was a large brown stain visible. The matron said that since he had not wiped his bottom he would get the same as the fourth boy. I was the last one in the line. I didn't know what was expected of me. The matron told me to drop my pants. I was unsure since I had never done that with anyone else present, but I slowly slipped my y-fronts to the ground and passed them to her. She made a deal out of inspecting them, but of course there were no stains in them so she passed me a pair of the pants all the other boys had. As I slid them up my legs I could feel the cool plastic of the leg openings against my skin. They were warm cloth on the inside with white plastic outers. Meanwhile, the matron had turned her attention on the other two boys. She opened one of the drawers and pulled out several items which she laid out on the bench down the middle of the room. She took a large cloth square and folded it into a triangle and lowered one of the boys on to it. I had never seen any child put in a cloth nappy before so it took a little while for me to realise what was happening. She brought one corner up between the boy's legs and another corner up from his side. She tucked this piece in between the layers of the first corner and then did the same with the other corner. It was easy to see that this nappy was on really tight as she fastened it with a single, large, safety pin through the front. Then she placed a pair of plastic pants over the boy's feet and pulled them up his legs before standing him up pulling them around his waist and tucking in any cloth of the nappy. As we all looked on, the second boy got the same treatment, but the matron stopped to clean his bottom with a wet wipe before pulling up the front of his nappy. Once we were all in our pants or nappies we went through to the dormitory to get dressed. The matron took me over to the wardrobe next to my bed and opened it. All the clothes were laid out in exactly the same way that they were in all the other boys wardrobes. I watched to see what the other boys were wearing and selected a polo shirt and track pants to put on. As I dressed I watched the boy next to me trying to pull his track pants over his nappy. He had a huge bulge in them. Once I had my trainers on we all lined up near the door and were taken outside to play. It was only as we left the backdoor of the school that I remembered I had not been to the toilet yet since tea. Chapter Two follows very soon.