I've been touching on this theme a bit, lately, and I could see someone looking at this from outside, and thinking to themselves, "It's deliberate, he's engineering these situations", but I swear that it's entirely coincidental, or, that the Universe has a plan of some sort, and I am just a cog in that machine. But I'm not particularly religious, so I think it's probably just viscous circumstance, in the end.
So, how long has it been since a pair of your pants exploded? I don't mean in the "oh my God I had curry last night and..." sense of the term, I mean the traditional splitting of pants, or in this case shorts, that can happen to anyone, diapered or not? It's been a long time for me. Well, it had been. Now, like lost time injuries in a factory, the calendar gets reset to zero, and it takes a while to get back up to an impressive number.
I was helping a friend rebuild part of a deck. We were having to shimmy over, or limbo under, joists, in order to facilitate this, and some of them had the cut-off ends of old nails sticking out of them. This was at that friend's place, let's call him George, and his wife can be Mindy. George and Mindy know I wear diapers - I've discussed this ad nauseum - and they're cool about it and nothing is said and life goes on. So, I wouldn't be overly concerned about, say, a waistline reveal or something like that, although I had a long t-shirt on, anyway, well tucked in under my hanging golf shirt. All the climbing and stooping demanded it - we had other friends dropping in and out. Despite the gymnastics, the shirt had a long tail, and there was no chance it would become untucked enough to expose white plastic to the sunlight, or in this case, white "cloth-like backing" because I was in an Active Air.
All was going fine, until the fateful moment when I slid across a beam, and caught one of those mostly-cut-off old nails, right at ground zero. The shorts, already aged, and washed a thousand times, died without making a sound - I just felt a change in the air pressure down below, and reached back to have a feel around... and I was able to make easy contact with exposed diaper, although I had no idea how visible it was. AND, I had to clamber up out of the hole I was standing in, and take a big step up onto a ledge, and walk along it like an iron worker, over to a door, in order to go check the status of my behind, with my eyes in a mirror.
"Parden me, folks, I just have to attend to something here..." was all I said, and then my buddy said, "Oh boy, yeah, might be time to retire those..."
Mindy said, "I'd offer to sew those, but I think there's nothing left to sew anything to... do you have another pair of shorts? Do you want to borrow a pair from George?"
This is where being an experienced diapernaut comes in handy, because of course, I had a spare pair of shorts in the trunk of my car, in my diaper bag, because I always carry something in there - shorts, jeans, a clothing option, in case of a catastrophic loss of containment, and I guess this was such a situation, although not in the conventional sense. The shorts I had were snugger, more athletic in design, than the baggy old cargo shorts that had failed me so completely, but at that point, it hardly mattered, which I realized once I was able to get in front of a mirror - there was a 6-inch tear up the back of my shorts on about a 45-degree angle, and other than if I stood completely still, it yawned sufficiently to expose a good patch of diaper. The diaper being white, maybe, maybe, someone could think to themselves, "those are white boxer shorts", but when the diaper was as wet from sweat as it was from beer that my body was turning into wee, so it was characteristically puffy, and I just knew that nobody seeing what I was seeing, would think anything other than, "Well, that's unfortunate... your pants have split and exposed your nappy..."
So, the somewhat snugger than I appreciate athletic shorts from my diaper bag were a welcome retreat from my current situation.
I changed my diaper, to relieve some of the puffiness, at least temporarily, and I put my new shorts on, and I returned to the job, and then we drank beer, and discussed the next phase in the operation, and then I went home, but, I'm feeling slightly dumb, I guess, as I view the incident in the rearview mirror. I made this choice, I did this to myself, these are the stupid prizes you get from playing stupid games. But caveat emptor, to anyone reading my babbling and thinking to themselves, "Being in diapers all the time sounds so awesome..." It mostly is awesome, but not always. You have to take the crunchy with the smooth.
Spencer shakes his head. "You didn't upset me. It is still a sore wound. Even after all these years. I'm sure in time. The wound will scab over and it will not hurt as much. I am looking forward to that day. So the mention of Carrie will not hurt as much." He nods. "Yes I am doing the best I can. It is hard being a single parent. Having to be both mom and dad to a child. It gets very challenging at times." Spencer smiles a bit. "And before mom asks. No I am not looking to start dating or getting married. I don't think I could go through the heartbreak of losing another wife."