I wet the bed until I was almost 13 years old. That made it hard to be in Boy Scouts AND be cool at the same time, but I made it work, and here's how:
I was freezing and it was because I'd pissed in the bed, only this time it wasn't a bed. It was a tent and I was 11 years old, far past the time when most children stop peeing on themselves. It was 3 a.m. in the frozen oblivion popularly known as 'Michigan, somewhere', and my teeth were rattling, my breath was rapid, I was sweating, nervous, and yet cunning.
Obviously, by this age, I already felt like an outcast. I'd come through a pretty serious stuttering problem that had already damaged my confidence. Thanks to the neighbor girl, however, I felt like someone still liked me (a story for another time), and that things would get better; ya know, just as soon as I stopped pissing myself every night. It was as if my bladder was set to go off like a sprinkler system and God was the one who had preset my personal circuitry. There was nothing I could do. No owners manual or manufacturer warranty accompanied the faulty plumbing that I had been saddled with.
But, I digress...
My mind has never been more sharp as what it was the moment I woke up in a puddle, and it's this experience that has always made me feel like I could pull off hiding a dead person from the rest of the world. I knew the horror I stood to endure at the hands of my peers if they would have found this out about me. Kids can be ruthless and, as women already know, most guys are above-average jerks.
So, it's a good thing everyone already hated Scotty.
Leaping to action, I stealthily rummaged through the clothes I'd brought along with me. Secretly, I knew most kids my age were stupid, or so I hoped. I was betting that I could change pants and underwear in the middle of the night and no one would ever realize the change the next day.
I found the pants and underwear, unzipped the tent and immediately stripped down to nothing. In the middle of a windy Michigan winter night, my chubby 11 year old ass, glowing by the light of the moon, quickly pulled fresh underwear and pants up my fat little legs and into place.
Knowing that this mission must be never spoken of again, I couldn't risk any witnesses for I'd be forced to murder them and hide them, along with the soggy bottomed boys I'd just replaced with fresh laundry. This was life or death.
Quietly, I stalked 4 tents to the right of mine where a fire still burned. I added a few logs, waited for it to get hot and cast my sins afar. By the way, do you know what piss-soaked clothing smells like when set on fire? That, plus smoke, billowed into my nostrils.
The clothes burned for 25 minutes or so, though it seemed like hours. In the east, the sun threatened to start rising any moment now and I had already freaked out 17 times thinking that I'd heard a noise. I had to move. Now.
I grabbed a nearby stick and scooped the remnants my wonderful smelling clothes from the fire, grabbed a shovel and ran off into the trees. Once there, I began digging a grave. There could be no evidence left behind. So, I dug and I dug. And I dug.
Finally comfortable with the depth of the hole I'd dug, I cast my shame to its final resting place and, like a villain from a Poe story, I sauntered off into the night with my conscience set toward self-preservation. I had executed this part of the mission perfectly, but there was still a puddle of evidence to be dealt with.
Climbing back into my sleeping bag, I initiated phase two of my plan. Slowly, inch by inch, I managed to position myself 180 degrees from where I once lay. I was now on the opposite side of the tent and that meant that I was also now on the opposite side of the puddle...
But, Scotty wasn't. In fact, lying next to me while he slept, he must have sensed space opening up to his left and, wanting to get away from the kid with stinky feet, he had to have scooted himself toward the puddle believing that this would make him more comfortable. Sure it would, Scotty. Sure it would.
For now.
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I remember now that I barely slept after that. We woke up, Scotty was in a pile of piss that he couldn't adequately defend himself against and he was pretty much ostracized from any consideration of mercy for the rest of my tenure in that particular Boy Scout Troop.
Of course I felt bad. Just, not bad enough to tell the truth.
In fact, not only did I not tell the truth, I was smart enough to not be the one to point out the puddle that next morning, thus perfectly executing my 2 part plan.
God, am I a sociopath?
I didn't care. There was no way in all the Valley of Hell that I was ever going to admit to what I had done. Screw Scotty. He had a dad who went on camp-outs with him. He wasn't even poor and most of the girls our age thought he was really cute. Every time he got a new toy, he always rubbed in my face. He was a braggart and a jerk; nowadays we'd just call him a douchebag.
Or, we would call him a typical 11 year-old boy. Who's to say, really?
At any rate, I often wonder about the man that kid became. I wonder if that had become the defining moment of Scotty's childhood and, abandoning all hope, he turned to crack or Satan worship or prostitution.
Or if, heaven-forbid, he became a politician; a thought too grim to bare.
So, Scotty The Port 'O Potty, I hope that my taking responsibility for this act somehow makes up for the years of counselling and addiction to Pull-Ups you have endured.
