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And Then the World Crinkled By: Snackers Chp. 1 The universe has a sense of humor. Or, at the very least, I’m convinced that whatever you and I understand reality to be… it’s got jokes. My life must be a particularly funny joke. I am not even sure how or why I ended up here. I can reasonably assume it is part of the ‘grand comedy’ and that ‘I’ exist somewhere between the opener and the punchline. Maybe I am the punchline. If I were to advise you about how NOT to become a beacon of cosmic humor, this is what I would do… Step one in my poorly written pamphlet would be “Stop complaining, it really isn’t that bad.” I would also add a subtext of, “It could be MUCH worse.” I did not follow this simple rule before I ended up here. I walked through life making a steady stream of complaints and shoulder shrugs. I could, and still can, eye roll on an Olympic level. In my defense, this is normal behavior for a teen where I am from. Where I exist now, it is apparently not. I want to state up front that the reality I grew up with is not a figment of my imagination. I am not crazy. Everyone thinks I am because I remember something no one else does, but I am absolutely sure of one fact. I AM POTTY TRAINED. I swear I am, and that SHOULD be normal. I potty trained when I was three years old. My aunt ribbed me for years that I was a devil to train, but past the age of four I have never had a problem making it to the bathroom or even considered the bathroom as anything worthy of much thought. It’s kind of the same way I don’t really think much about eating, drinking, breathing or sleeping except when I need to do one of them. So this is why I think something or someone is playing a joke on me. I made one off color remark about hating the bathroom and how it was inconvenient to wait in line to sit down and pee between classes. It is bullshit that I drink water, just to pee it out later. I didn’t really mean anything by it; I was just complaining. In all fairness, I complain about everything, its normal. I complain about boredom. I complain about the weather. I complain about new games not being released yet… I communicate through negativity, it is how I express myself as a teen. It all happened after the break between classes. My math teacher hit his number stride which put half the class to sleep. I dozed off too and either the world collectively decided to play a prank on me, or something beyond my understanding pulled the rug out from under my feet. “Samantha? What do you think you are doing?” asked Ms. Taylor. I was a little stunned because she’d caught me by the wrist and was holding firm. Usually, teachers were very hands off with students. She was supposed to go get an administrator if I were acting up. But I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was just walking. I frowned and checked my clothing to make sure I wasn’t out of school regulation. I had on a plaid skirt, and a hoodie that was probably a little too large. It wasn’t out of regs though. I looked at her hand on my wrist before looking up to her. “Um, I’m going to my locker? Pretty much the same thing I do every day between classes. Is that wrong?” Ms. Taylor sighed and used her other hand to flip my skirt, suddenly flashing my black panties to the hallway. “HEY!” I said quickly pulling my skirt down. Ms. Taylor didn’t seem to care and started walking back down the hallway, surprising me as she suddenly tugged me stumbling behind her in a new direction. My hand remained on my skirt, still a bit shocked. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a student take her diaper off. Students wear diapers for a reason and I’m not about to subject our poor janitorial staff to your foolish acts of rebellion on our school floors.” “Diapers?!?!” I blurted out, not entirely sure I’d heard her correctly. “Why on earth would students wear…?” Right on beat, as if to answer my question before it had even been voiced, Skye walked by us. Skye was indisputably the social queen bee of my school. Well, I say she walked but more realistically she waddled. She was flanked by her gal pal Ami with an i. It must have been a Friday home game at our school. I knew this because both girls were wearing cheerleader uniforms, which you could only do in class if it was a home game. The usual skirt was shorter than I remembered and did nothing to hide their diapers. I just gawked at them not even trying to hide what they were wearing. Skye had on a disposable with pink, yellow and light purple butterflies decorating it, and Ami with an i had something thicker under a pair of yellow plastic pants with three rows of ruffles on her bottom. “Hi Ms. Taylor,” both girls said in unison as they crinkled by. They gave me the side eye as they passed, which was business as usual, but … I just couldn’t stop staring. I even craned my head back like I was a Toucan or something trying to keep an eye on them as they walked by. Ami with an i noticed and did a little waggle of her butt at me causing the ruffles to flap in a flippant way. I made a face which must have resembled the caveman Spongebob meme, completely stupefied. Did I just get something like ‘the finger’ from a diapered butt? “Bye girls,” Ms. Taylor said not even slowing as she tugged me down the hallway. I struggled to form coherent speech as I was led. So many things did not make sense. I was barely a blip on Skye’s radar, I doubt she even knew my name. The chances of her debasing herself by wearing diapers just to pull a prank on me were very slim. As we turned a corner, we passed a few other students and it only served to deepen the creeping sense of dread I had coming over me. Kim from my earlier math class was wearing overalls with a pink heart on the front and a pacifier in her mouth. There was no way the slight bulge around her middle was anything other than a diaper. It was the same for Jason, a guy from my home room. His clothing was almost normal, with the exception of the low hanging jeans and the obvious diaper fringe poking out. “Why is everyone wearing diapers…?” I asked quietly as I was dragged along. From what I could see, EVERY student was in diapers. A few of them stopped and stared at me, one boy even gave a childish ‘ooooooOOOOooooo’ like I was in trouble and the whole school knew it. Ms. Taylor took me past the front office and over to the school nurse. Honestly, I didn’t really know the nurse that well, I think her name was Mrs. Fielder or Felding or something. She was a 40-something woman who was usually nice enough. She looked up as we approached and immediately fixed her gaze on me, quirking an eyebrow. “Little miss rebel here took her diaper off,” Ms. Taylor said. “Hmmm… Samantha Jones. First time she’s done this, I don’t see her in here much,” the nurse said as she turned to the computer at her desk. “No worries, I’ll see to her, let me just check her student file.” Ms. Taylor nodded, finally easing her grip off of my wrist. I was quick to yank it back, rubbing at a slight sore spot. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been dragged around like a naughty toddler. “She has a stock of disposables, Princess Padding specifically. They should be in her locker and I’d imagine in her backpack. I have extras in the back here too. Oh, and her parents authorized spanking, corner time, mouth soaping and enemas if she gets out of line,” the nurse said as she pushed herself up from her desk. “WHAT?!?!?!” I exclaimed. The nurse had just said some things, and I knew what these things were, but they did not make any sense in referencing me. She might as well have said that there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese. The nurse was already getting something from her storage room and Ms. Taylor was gesturing for me to get up on an exam table. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, HELL NO. No. No. No. NO. NO. NO! I’m out, whatever you’re up to, whatever is going on here, I want no part of it,” I said as I bolted for the door. Ms. Taylor was fast, but when the words ‘spanking’ and ‘enema’ were mentioned in conjunction with my name, I WAS FASTER. My butt was on the line, literally. The door burst open and I was careening through the hallway like a pinball. I hit a trash can, knocked over some poor teen toddler boy, caused a teacher to drop an armful of papers. I tried to sputter an apology in passing but I didn’t stop moving. I crashed out the front entrance of the school and ran into the parking lot. I made a panicked dive behind a car to check if I was being followed. I half expected the school resource officer to come rushing out after me with a stun gun in one hand, diaper in the other. School hadn’t let out yet, so the parking lot was still mostly full of cars and empty of people. I waited two minutes and when no one seemed to be coming I tried my best to stay low and sneak from car to car until I was out of the parking lot and through the path that led to the suburbs just off school grounds. I was lucky enough to live close to the school. It was about a mile and a half, but I could cover that distance in 25 mins at a walk. I could do it in half the time running in a panic, which was exactly what I was doing. I managed to put some distance between me and the epicenter of insanity. I only slowed my pace as I got about a block from my house. The world seemed normal-ish… Houses looked the same. Birds in the trees, blue skies, cars on the road. Although looking twice, a lot of the cars driving by had really big safety seats in back. There were also a lot more Mini-vans then what seemed normal. I brushed that oddness from my head and hopped the fence to my backyard, rushing for my old treehouse. It was my tiny, rickety, fortress of solitude in this world. I rushed up the ladder and hunkered down. I don’t know how long I was there, but there was a vague sense of time passing as I sat there, knees hugged to my chest. I couldn’t stop muttering ‘diapers’ ‘cheerleader butt’ and ‘evil teachers and nurses’ over and over again. The irony that I’d picked my childhood safe space to escape too was not completely lost on me. I’m not sure how much time passed, but at some point I heard movement outside as someone started to climb up the leader to my little fort. I readied my legs. If a teacher, nurse, zombie or trickster god intended to put a diaper on me they were going to get a sketchers size 9 to the face. What came up instead took me completely by surprise. It was my neighbor Daniel, only it wasn’t. Daniel was a bookish and shy guy who liked to play video games and paint little miniatures. We were fellow nerds, and usually walked to school together. We’d been best friends forever. The difference between the Daniel I was used to, and the Daniel poking their head up was that this Daniel was a girl. The face was still the same, with light brown eyes and a pair of glasses that were a little too big, but his dirty blonde mop of hair was now well past his shoulders and held to one side with a cute flower hairclip. “Umm… Daniel?” Hearing the name seemed to almost be a slap in the face. She frowned as she started to climb the rest of the way into the treehouse. “It’s Dani. Why would you call me that?” she asked. “You’re a… girl?” Dani rolled her eyes. “Well, yah? I mean, I have been since I was like 7.” As she came into the treehouse, I got a good look at what she was wearing. She had on a cute wide neck sweater and a pair of short shorts. My eyes widened as I saw that her shorts bulged over a diaper with the fringe poking out around her mid-drift. “Not you too…” I sighed. Everything was so confusing… sooo wrong. “You are being hella rude right now. What’s wrong with you?” Dani asked as she sat down on her knees. She put her hands on her hips like she was a pouting parent talking to her errant child. It was a very odd look for her, one because she was wearing a diaper and looked pretty juvenile with the hair clip; and two because I actually did feel a little chastised for some reason. “I uh… Somethings wrong,” I said as I leaned away from her, shrinking before her pout that was actually way cuter than it had any right to be. “I’ll say, do you know what people are saying at school?” I shook my head no. “You took your diaper off and had to go to the office. Are you even wearing one right now?” Dani asked as she reached for my skirt. My hands quickly shot to my skirt to hold it down. The motion caused Dani to raise her eyebrow at me. “I’ll take that as a no… Sam, what’s going on? What happened to you today?” “What happened to me? What happened to you!? Why are you in diapers? Why are you a girl?!” Dani’s frown deepened and she sighed. I can’t stress how un-Daniel like this girl was. Where was the shy and timid guy that followed me around like a puppy? This girl had confidence and seemed very sure of who and what she was. “All right, I’ll play along. What happened to me is I came straight home out of concern for my best friend who I am pretty sure is in some trouble at school. I am in diapers because that’s normal, and I am a girl because that’s what I am.” My shoulders slumped a little. It couldn’t be that simple. I mean, sure Daniel was a little effeminate, and … she looked really good as a girl, but… How did this all change in a day? “Sam, what’s really wrong? You look like you’re about to cry. What on earth happened today?” “I don’t really know. Everyone is wearing diapers. Ms. Taylor tried to drag me to the nurse to put me in one too. You’re a girl when just yesterday you were a guy. None of this makes sense.” Dani considered what I’d said and leaned over to hug me. She crinkled as she moved and I was definitely not used to contact like this from Daniel, but when her arms came around me I immediately hugged back. “I think you’re really stressed, but lets work through this. Why does none of this make sense? Why don’t you want to wear diapers?” I shook my head. “Why WOULD I wear diapers?” “Because you’re not old enough to be potty trained,” Dani stated matter of factly. I blinked and eased myself out of the hug. “I am potty trained.” Dani looked very skeptical. “I AM!” “Suuuuure, let’s just ignore that diaper pail in your room that your mom is always getting on you to empty. I had to wear a clothespin on my nose when I came over yesterday,” Dani teased as she made a show of holding her nose. “WHAT?! Ewww, I’ve never, I mean, like, I’ve not worn a diaper since I was a baby.” Dani rolled her eyes again. “Would you stop doing that? I’m serious. I don’t need diapers. I’m potty trained. EVERYONE at school should be potty trained.” “Sam… no one our age is potty trained. Certainly not me, and certainly not you. Do you know how many times I’ve changed you after school? How many times you’ve changed me? Hell, how many times we’ve been changed side by side by our parents?” There was no way that was true. I had zero memories of it. This was a nightmare. A very real and very weird nightmare. I tried to add up 2 and 2 but kept getting something very different from 4. Dani saw me tearing up and was quick to put her hand on my shoulder. “Okay, lets assume for the sake of argument that you ARE potty trained. What’s wrong with diapers? Do you hate them?” I blinked, almost surprised by the question. “I… I just don’t want to wear them. Diapers are for babies. Until today I hadn’t even thought about diapers in years… I don’t want them and I don’t need them,” I said firmly. No sooner had I said it, then I felt a warmth beginning to spread between my legs. There was a soft pitter patter noise and both Dani and I looked down at the same time to see a growing wet pool quickly forming under me. Dani sighed. “Riiiiiight.”