Changing Times

My very first memory that I can recall happened in 1961 when I was just two years-old. I remember it vividly. It made quite an impression on me in more ways than one.

A few years ago, I asked my mother about this incident.

At the time, I wasn’t sure if it actually happened or I just imagined it, or even a little of both. To my utter shock and surprise, my mother affirmed everything I remember about this incident in 1961 with one slight caveat: she wasn’t angry with me and I wasn’t crying. At least, that is my mom’s version and it may be more accurate than my own recollection of the incident. Where does the truth lie?

I had just turned two at the time. My mom had taken me out of diapers and put me in “big boy pants” (training pants) and this was probably the fifth or sixth attempt at potty-training me. The first potty-training attempt came when I had just turned 13 months and just started walking.

My mother was getting ready to take me shopping with her when I felt the need to poop. Without telling my mom or trying to use the potty chair set up in the bathroom, I slipped behind a bedroom door and pooped my pants.

I remember this like it was yesterday. I was two years-old.

I remember hiding behind that door with an intense drive to poop in my pants. I had bowel control (as much as any 2 or 3 year-old can have) but I had no desire to use a potty.

I also remember being terrified of what my mom would do or say after the deed was done. And yet, I was determined to dirty my pants. Perhaps I thought that would make my mom love me (she really didn’t) and get her to “baby” me and take me back to the only safe place I knew: Diapers.

Whatever the actual reason, the act of messing my pants was deliberate and the desire was beyond my control.

In fact, although I had bowel control, I did not have “emotional control,” that is, the drive to mess my pants like a baby was insatiable and relentless. It was all I thought about while I was in training pants and potty-training.

I remember standing behind that door, listening to my mom on the phone. As she talked to her friend on the phone, I pooped my pants and it felt so good. In that brief moment of having a bowel movement in my “big boy pants” I was transported to a heavenly place of bliss.

I was two years-old.

When I had finished my business, I came out of hiding and my mom smelled poop. After pulling back my waistband for a peek to confirm this, my mom took me back to my bedroom where diapers and rubber pants were waiting for me. I remember seeing cloth diapers and rubber baby pants (toddler size) laying on the bed, along with blue diaper pins, Johnson’s baby powder, and several terry-cloth washcloths to wipe my poopy bottom.

I remember thinking that my mom had been planning to put me back in diapers that day when I saw all of the diapering supplies on the bed waiting for me.

My mom says she wasn’t angry and that I didn’t protest going back into diapers, but I remember it differently.

My mom’s version of events:

“When you pooped your last clean pair of training pants that day, I decided to put you back into diapers. You didn’t cry or protest and I just figured that poopy diapers were easier to change then poop falling out of your training pants on to the floor. We were living at Grandma’s house at the time and I decided to keep you in diapers since you had no interest in using your potty chair I bought you. I figured that if you were going to poop your pants like a baby, then I was going to diaper you like a baby.”

And she did.

I remember her holding the two diaper pins in her mouth as she powdered my bottom with baby powder and diapered me with a thick, double cloth diaper along with toddler-sized rubber baby pants. I remember it like it happened yesterday.

I was in diapers and rubber pants until the age of 4 or 5.