Life Happens Next Read Free

the shower together, and it seemed as though Ally and I had been like this many times before. It was completely natural. Like I said, this dream is R-rated, so I won’t go into all the details. We were just two people in the shower together and the girl was really, really hot , so you do the math.
    The downside was leaving my daydream. I wanted to stay where I had been, longed to keep feeling the warm water and Ally’s touch lingering … sigh … and you wonder why I like dreams so much?

4
    D reaming is one thing. Reality is something else. Like every Monday through Friday morning, I’m at school. And like most every other day, I’ve just made a mess in my diaper. You might think I’d get used to this since I’ve never used a toilet in my life, but I hate it. It’s not like I have any choice in the matter. I know when I need to go, either number one or number two, and I wish I could just say, “Excuse me please, I need to use the bathroom.” But I can’t. I can’t say anything. I can’t tap my foot, or make my eyes blink, or wiggle my pinky as a signal to get me to the john. I can’t push a button on a communication board or make myself say “Ahhhhhh” as a signal. I can’t do anything except, well, just let it happen and wait for someone to check me out or to notice the smell and say, “Shawn needs changing.”
    I don’t feel humiliation, exactly, or embarrassment since there’s nothing I can do to change the situation, but I always feel sad and sorry for whoever it is who changes me. And at school that job usually goes to the teacher’s aide, William.
    â€œOkay, buddy,” William says as he lifts me from my wheelchair and helps me walk. I always say I can’t walk, but if someone holds me under my arms, like William is doing right now, and kind of carries me along, my legs will move one foot after another until William lowers me to the floor into a kneeling position. Now I can stay upright and rock back and forth. This is funny because I don’t do this by choice; my body just rocks back and forth and I can’t stop it any more than start it—it just happens.
    William rolls me onto my back, sort of gently lifting me by my legs so whatever size mess is in my diaper doesn’t get all mashed up even worse than it already is and spread around. He unsnaps the legs on my pants. He lifts my pant legs up and out of the way and undoes my disposable diaper by tearing the little taped fasteners, folds it over on itself, and sets it aside. Using a handy wipe from a big plastic tub next to the changing blanket, he wipes me until I’m clean. He’s never rough or in a hurry. Now he puts another diaper on me, snug but not too tight.
    â€œThat feel better?” he almost always asks.
    I think back to him, “Yeah, thank you, William—I feel really bad you have to do this.”
    And sometimes, like now, I wonder if he thinks back to me, “No problem, Shawn—you’re a good kid and you can’t help it.”
    Truthfully, I kind of doubt that William thinks this, but his kindness makes me realize that he really does care about me.
    This whole diaper-changing thing also makes me wonder about the huge difference between kindness and meanness. Think about it—I don’t have all that many interactions with people, I’m mostly just sort of “handled,” more of a problem than a person. William could be a total dick toward me, but he never is. Seems to me there are a million examples of how nice or how cruel people act every moment of every day. The way William so patiently and tenderly helps me is a great example of kindness. But meanness is always about half an inch away too. Life is such a jumbled mess of good and bad and totally random things, like having C.P. or not having it. William is kind, for no real reason, he just is that way. Other people, not so much.
    This morning, for