one of the worst things I have ever done.

A Story by honey*

(another repost)

I guess I was about 10 years old, spending the night at my friend's house. She had a younger sister, the sweetest and kindest human being ever, she had Down Syndrome. On this particular night, all three of us slept in one big bed. At this point in time, I still wet the bed.

And the unthinkable happened on this night. Yes, it happened. I wet the bed that night. Only one of my friends knew about this little problem, and that was Michelle. She was cool. She even asked me if I "took my pretty pill" each night. Oh, you mean I've never told you about my Pretty Pills?

It's a prescription I had as a kid, these tiny little pills, you took one each night and supposedly it was supposed to dry you up. Never worked for me. I'll tell you what did work, though. When my parents finally cracked down and bought one of those diabolical electrical pads. You fall asleep. You drift off into a sweet dream. You pee. And then you are frightened out of your ever-lovin mind by the loudest noise imaginable, making you leap to your feet and run all around the room trying to figure out how to make it be quiet, but you can't figure it out because you're only 10 years old and still half-asleep. And what's worse is the entire household can hear it and probably the neighbors as well. So basically it's an alarm that informs the entire world that you have just wet the bed. I am even going to go so far as to tell you what it was called. It came from the Sears catalog. It was called.... The Wee Alert.

Well let me tell you what. A few go-rounds with that thing and I was cured. I think my dad asked why we didn't do that a long time ago. Just knowing that he knew, that the siren was telling on me, was enough. I shudder at the thought of it, even now.

But back to this night I spent with my other friend, with the sweet little sister. The sister had slept between us that night. I woke up and realized that I had wet the bed. This could not be happening, no, see, her brother was in my class. This just cannot be made public. And here is my confession, here is how I handled this situation:

The little sister was still sound asleep. I traded places with her. She didn't know it, though. I just sort of moved her over, sort of rolled her, into my place, and took hers.

I did this. To a child with Down Syndrome.

An hour or two passed, and we all woke up. My friend said, "what's that smell?" I sat up and agreed, what WAS that smell? The little sister felt all around her and I hope I am making this up, I hope this didn't happen, but I want to say she started crying, out of shame.

She was busted, peeing in the bed.

My friend commented on it and said only babies do that, and I agreed.

Is this really all that bad?

Oh, wait, I forgot to finish telling you about my Pretty Pills. That's what my mom called them, to make me feel better. It all started one night when my friend was spending the night, and the friend walked into the kitchen and busted me taking my nightime pill. She asked what it was and I got all red in the face, that's when my mom came to my rescue and said, "Those are Amy's Pretty Pills. She takes one every night, and they keep her pretty." Or something like that. I didn't know it at the time, but as she said it, she was winking, and I found out years later that my friend knew my secret all along.