IT WAS ONLY MINUTES

In the late 70s Joshua T. was born on a cold windy night in February and within minutes, Jason T made his entry into the world. Healthy twin boys, born to Dr. Helena and Dr. Cecil M right on time and without complications. Dr. Helena, a practicing internal medicine physician and Dr. Cecil, a practicing neurosurgeon started their family in a very large Victorian home on a shady street not to far from the university where they both earned their MD degrees.

Insofar as my twin brother being born only a few minutes before me; he really held that over my head in most things that we did together. He was the older one and therefore, according to him, the most adapt in taking the lead in all the stuff that we did as kids. Well almost everything. It seems when we had an appointment at the dentist’s office, I was always the first to go in and face the drills and whatever else the dentist had in store for us during a visit. Braces, we both had them, and all the routine stuff too.

At our house, dad, mom, Maggie, a live in housekeeper, Joshua or Josh for short and Jason, Jace for short and last but not least our Irish Setter dog named Auggie filled then many rooms with lots of noise. For one thing, every time the doorbell rang, Auggie went berserk with her barking and Maggie would try to shut her up but it never worked.

As toddlers around three or four years old, both Josh and I were still in diapers and it didn’t seem anyone was overly concerned about it. Certainly not Josh or I. To us, diapers and plastic pants during the day and for sure every night seemed to be pretty much the norm. In most all cases, mom got both of us guys up in the morning, made sure we had a bath or shower, helped us dress by putting a diaper and plastic pants on us and then making sure we brushed our teeth and then went down from our third floor bedrooms to the breakfast nook for whatever Maggie cooked up for the first meal of the day. Many mornings we simply ate breakfast in a diaper and plastic pants and with a bib to hopefully keep some of the food from hitting the floor where Auggie waited with only a slight wag of her tail.

Before even going to school, we spent the better part of our day playing in the yard if it was summer, or in the playroom, a huge room off our bedrooms. The only interruption in the day would be time out for lunch, a nap that our parents insisted on or the occasional shopping trip whereby we would meet up with our mother in her downtown office. The interruptions usually included diaper changes prior to lunch, after our naps and on occasion, when we got home from shopping. Our dad stayed really busy in his practice every day and so we didn’t get to see him until the early evening hours. Both parents made sure they had time for us on the weekend and that we loved. For one thing, we loved getting up first in the morning, running to our parent’s room, jumping into their bed with them and having a ‘free for all’ in so far as ruff housing. There were more than one occasions when we first had a diaper change due to overly wet nighttime diapers.

Once we did start school, our daytime wetting sort of went by the wayside and for the most part, we both wore a night diaper and plastic pants because both of us still wet the bed at night. We both had a rubber sheet on our beds and you could easily tell that because the rubber sheets were a maroon color and they would show up through the white sheets on the bed. Being rubber, they didn’t make any noise, unlike the plastic sheets on our beds at grandma and grandpa’s house. When we got in bed and if the sheets did get wet due to leaking at night, it was easy to get the rubber sheet and sheets off the bed for Maggie.

Probably about ninety-eight percent of the time, it was our mother who helped us get ready for bed. A bath and then one by one, my mother would put a double diaper on Josh and then me and then she would make sure that the plastic pants completely covered the diaper before giving us a kiss goodnight and tucking us into our beds. On the rare occasion, it was our dad who would get us ready for bed and the routine was usually always the same except both Josh and I decided our dad wasn’t really good with putting diapers on us. We would go to the extent of telling our dad what to do but he would tell us his way was best and besides we wouldn’t be able to tell if the diaper was on right or not once we got to sleep. He was right about that.

Maggie diapered us only on very rare occasions at night. It was usually if our parents went to some medical convention together. She never complained about diapering us and everything was sort of ‘matter of fact’ with her.

During the first few years of school, both Josh and I were totally embarrassed one day when we both wet our pants at school. We had big boy underpants on and why the wetting took place we are not sure but the other kids in our classroom sure got an eyeful. We were totally embarrassed and our mom came to school with clean clothes for us and we managed to get by the rest of the day but not without a lot of kids asking if we were wearing diapers under our dress slacks. We were not wearing diapers but our friends didn’t want to take our word for it and on the playground, some bigger kids actually pulled down our slacks to see if we had a diaper on. Josh started to cry and so I did my best to shield him from the others and he was able to compose himself after a few minutes. On that day, we both hated school.

Not totally remembering which grade we were in, most likely the fourth or fifth grade, making us around nine or ten years old; mother put one of those bed wetting alarms on each of our beds. We still had diapers on but without plastic pants. Well that lasted all of four nights or so and we were then back in the diapers with plastic pants. With both parents being physicians, the business of going to the doctor’s office to discuss bedwetting just didn’t happen and when asked by us, either parent would tell us we would outgrow the bedwetting and to not worry about it. Our mother would ask if we were upset at needing diapers on at night and we both claimed that was not a problem as we simply didn’t think of it very often, if at all.

Between my brother and I, probably only a very few of our friends knew we wet the bed at night and two of our cousins also knew that we wet. For one thing, if our friends came to our house to play, which was often, we played in the playroom off our bedrooms or in the family room on the second floor of the house. One day in my bedroom, a friend of ours was waiting for me to get the rest of my baseball uniform out of the closet and he noticed folded sheets and the folded rubber sheet on the bed. Maggie’s custom was to redo the beds as part of the last chore of the day and so the folded sheets and the maroon rubber sheet were just stacked on the bed. My friend didn’t say much and just sort of kept looking at the rubber sheet and touching it once or twice. He didn’t tell me if he needed a rubber sheet on his bed and he didn’t tell me if he wet or not, however, the way he looked at the rubber sheet seemed to suggest to me that he was more than familiar with rubber or plastic sheets. Besides, he didn’t talk about the rubber sheet or ask me if I wet and so he probably had the problem himself and felt better to let things stay the way they were.

Wetting just continued and both Josh and I were wondering when all of it would stop. If we talked to our mother or dad or both of them, they always told us that many of our school buddies probably wet the bed too and that we should never worry or concern ourselves about it. The main thing was to put a diaper on at night so that we wouldn’t have to sleep in a cold wet bed and to provide some protection so that the mattress on our beds wouldn’t get wet.

At about this time in our life, we were getting more and more concerned about mother coming into our rooms at night to put a diaper on us. At this same period of time, we went to France with our parents as they were planning on attending some sort of medical convention in Paris. Once we flew into New York from our Midwestern city, a quick check in at the airline counter for our overseas flight and then without much discussion, our mom tells us she was going to have us wear a diaper on the plane in hopes that we would go to sleep and not stay up all night.

Neither Josh nor I were ready for this. My mom took me to the woman’s rest room off the club waiting room at the airport and had me go to the bathroom and then proceeded to put a diaper and snap on plastic pants on me. That part wasn’t so bad because she has done it so many times before, but in a woman’s bathroom at the airport! Dad took Josh to the men’s restroom and did the same thing. Another mother had her son, probably a little younger than I in the bathroom and while I cannot say for sure, I think that boy knew my mom put a diaper on me. Once we got out of the restroom, I didn’t see him again and that was okay for my part.

The convention took up a lot of time for dad but mom spent most of her time with us. The trip was mostly uneventful and we had fun. With this trip and with any of the others that we took, the hotel people knew we had bed wetting problems and so they put plastic sheets or rubber pads on the bed.

What seemed to take a life time now that we look back at it; mom finally showed Josh and I how to put our own night diaper on. As a matter of fact, we were introduced to disposable diapers and this was a novel to us at the time but we seemed to like the idea of a diaper and plastic pants all in one. Best of all, we could put them on ourselves. The downside however was the constant leaking but in time we learned how to deal with that problem. Because we had experience with both cloth diapers and plastic pants and with disposables it didn’t really occur to us which was better. We just knew we needed one or the other each night. Disposable diapers made a big hit with Maggie however. Much less laundry to do and that was agreeable with her.

During the 8^th grade we passed from being kids to teenagers and we continued to wet. Each of us were classified as primary bedwetters because we simply did not have any dry nights from being little kids to teens. Diapers to us were as second nature as underpants. We just knew we needed to wear a diaper at night. We could count on one hand with fingers left over, the number of nights that we went to bed without wearing a diaper. On those nights, waking up to a cold wet bed, having to get out of bed to get dry sheets and dry PJs was enough to make us understand fully the reasons for wearing a nighttime diaper.

As teens, probably in the 10^th grade, Josh started to have some nights when he didn’t wet. His diaper was dry in the morning and being that we were in our summer vacation time from school, he would just wear the diaper around the house before getting dressed for the day. Our parents were usually out of the house early in the morning, making rounds at the hospital and stuff like that. Maggie was home but she sort of did her own thing and we did ours. No such luck for me though. I’d always wake up wearing a wet diaper.

It was right around this time when we both noticed strange things happening to us. For one thing, if my diaper was wet, sometimes on rare occasions, I would have an explosion in my diaper, (wet dream), and while it felt like nothing I could describe, it scared the daylights out of me. I didn’t even know what it was and this made things all the more complex at the time. The same for Josh. Needless to say it was time for our parents to talk to both of us about adulthood and what to expect with the changes happening to our bodies.

Mother first explained to us that everything we were experiencing was perfectly normal. So many new words for our vocabulary! Penis, semen, ejaculation, and the list went on and on. Dad spent a lot of time with Josh and I in our workroom off the garage telling us all the things that would happen. While being somewhat concerned about all of this, Josh holding true to form assured me that he understood all that was going on and that we should not worry. On the few occasions when he would wet his bed at night, he would put on dry PJs and come into my bed. It was then when we would snuggle and we both remember how comforting that was.

Without doubt, at this stage of life, I knew something else was happening with me. Now instead of wondering if I’d ever get out of diapers, it was becoming more enjoyable wearing them at night. A strange feeling that I could not explain other than finding it very comfortable to wear a diaper at night and if wet in the morning, equally comfortable. Another talk with my mother and dad resulted in both of them telling me to just continue wearing a diaper to provide protection and sooner or later this would all be behind me. Josh saw me in diapers nearly every night and it was no big deal to him or I.

When grandpa, dad’s dad, required some surgery things changed a little at our house. We were finishing up in high school and Josh was already looking at some of the universities that we were interested in. Dad insisted that grandpa and grandma stay with us at least until grandpa got back on his feet from the surgery that he had. It was nice having them at our house and like everyone claims, their grandma was or is one mighty fine cook, especially pies and cakes! It seems grandpa who had some prostate surgery was recovering nicely, yet, his operation left him incontinent and when they stayed at our house, grandpa would wear one of the disposable diapers from the package that I had open in the bedroom. It was all sort of ‘matter of fact’ and it certainly was no big deal at our house. Grandpa wore some of my diapers for about four weeks and then was able to control himself after that.

Our college days did come and after many long exhausting trips to various universities, both Josh and I decided on which one we wanted to attend. (more on this later).

What is of importance here is the fact that even now in our professional career, I much prefer to wear a diaper at night even though I did finally dry up for the most part during my senior year of high school. Josh and his family live nearby and his oldest boy is a bed wetter. Yes, he does wear Goodnights at night. Like us, his family doesn’t make a big deal of his wetting and he’s turning out to be a really good boy.

We get home to be with the entire family on a regular basis. While Josh is the outgoing twin and the one born first, by only a few minutes, (woopie), I tend to be much more content to lead a quite life enjoying the family, career, the performing arts, friends and making sure I have a diaper on each and every night. Josh wants me to join up with him in his office, but then I know he’ll be telling me there is nothing to worry about because he’s already experienced it or something of that nature. Strange, he’s older only by minutes, has experienced all that I’ve experienced and looks to me should we have a situation that needs both of our attention.

Jason.