Story #117: Trailer Trash and Diaper Rash

Story #117: Trailer Trash and Diaper Rash (Content Tags: Poverty, slice of life, from riches to rags, autism, messy undies, messy Pull-Ups, humiliation, verbal abuse, bullying, class dynamics) The term 'trailer trash' wasn't a nice one, and in many cases, it was an ignorant simplification of a more impoverished, rural lifestyle. The same could be said for the term 'white trash', or 'redneck', and in plenty of cases those would indeed be slurs based on stereotypes. This was not one of those cases. Tatum had absolutely no qualms with using any of those phrases, and if one was to take a look at the trailer park that he'd been forced to move into, then nobody would blame him for using such words either. It was the sort of place where day-drinking in a lawn chair was the norm, where most of the adults hadn't finished middle school, and where they were having way more kids than they could afford. Tatum wasn't comfortable living in such a shoddy abode, especially after he'd just been living in a nice suburban neighborhood not too long ago. He'd been living there with his mother, since his father had left the two of them, and he hadn't realized just how bad things had gotten. The bank foreclosed on their house. He'd been clueless that it was going to happen, but anyone else would have seen the writing on the wall. His mother had been completely financially dependent on his father, and his father had left them pretty much penniless after he'd fled the country for embezzlement charges. Tatum didn't know what embezzlement was, but he wasn't shocked to find out that this father was on the wrong side of the law. The man had hardly been present to begin with, and even a kid could pick up on how morally dubious he was. His parents had actually filed for divorce prior to that, but his mother had thought she'd at least get half of their assets. Unfortunately, those assets were considered ill-gotten, so anything that his father hadn't taken with him was forfeited to the government or the company or whoever. There had been a few weeks after they got kicked out of their house, where his mother had gotten a job as a waitress, and they'd been living in a crappy motel room. Luckily, or unluckily, it'd been Summer vacation during this stint. So Tatum found himself alone for hours on end at the motel, and he spent most of that time playing video games or watching TV. While his father was an unethical crook, his mother was no prize either. The woman hadn't come from much, and she only had a GED to her name on an academic level; she drank too much and wasn't above getting into scuffles either. For the last decade that she'd been married, and a mother, she had seemed to adapt to suburban life, but she'd never quite fit in with those that she considered 'stuffy'. This context made it all the more apparent why she'd picked Frank as a replacement for the husband that'd left her. It was why Tatum had ended up in this disgusting trailer park, and why he was currently being forced to play outside with little more than a stained tank top and a smelly, long-dirtied pair of disposable briefs. To rewind a bit, there was more to it than that. Tatum was ten years old and autistic; he wasn't far enough on the spectrum for it to mean a whole lot, but he did have some unique problems that stemmed from the condition. It was mostly sensory and emotional processing that he struggled with, but some social deficits and learning problems were involved too. He'd only been diagnosed shortly before his father had left, and he'd only been tested because his school had made their concerns repeatedly stated. Part of that might have been because of his accidents. Tatum had been mostly pottytrained since he was around four, or at least that'd been when the diapers had come off for good, but accidents (mostly of the messy persuasion) had persisted ever since. Tatum had been pretty good at hiding a lot of them as he got older, since he realized how embarrassing it was to still struggle with something as simple as bowel control. It'd gotten harder when he'd lived in the motel, at least during the parts that his mother was around for; he could shower and rinse his undies when she was at work, but he couldn't do much when she was in the same room as him. She'd thought it was stress related, due to their rapidly changing circumstances, and she was correct in a way; his accidents had gotten much worse once his living situation did the same. She did what she could to buy him extra underwear and hoped that it'd resolve itself. But then along came Frank. If anyone deserved to be called 'trailer trash', it was this man. Frank was a gallon of irritable ignorance poured into an iron thimble, and he didn't shy away from that. Tatum considered that half the man's vocabulary must be slurs, and that their level of formal education was probably not far off from eachother. The man had a beer-gut, a trucker cap, and perpetually reeked of his vices. He was a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, jingoistic alcoholic that ranted about conspiracy theories and had a hair-trigger. He drank in public, smoked inside, and never left home without a bag of chew in his jeans. His mother had first introduced him to Frank after already knowing him for several weeks from the diner; the three had gone out for ice cream, and that was probably when he'd seen the man at his most cordial. Stupidly, Tatum had just thought Frank was his mother's friend, and that was the end of it. He saw the man sporadically while at the motel, and he'd even had the displeasure of meeting the man's kids. Billy and Bubba. Tatum still wasn't sure if Bubba was really the name of the younger of the two, but he had never heard anything to the contrary. Billy was his age, ten, but he was bigger than Tatum and a whole heck of a lot more rowdy. Bubba was six and looked like he was missing more baby teeth than what should be developmentally appropriate; the younger merely mirrored the older, so the two together were a typhoon. The first time that Frank had brought his brats along for the outing, he'd taken them all to a dingy carnival. It was the type of place that didn't stay long enough in town to fail an inspection and where the food was fried two to three more times than necessary. The trailer boys had been ecstatic, but Tatum was more reserved, and admittedly more of a mama's boy. He stuck by his mother like glue, much to Frank's chagrin. The man would eventually give Billy some tickets and tell the trio to go have some fun, which meant Tatum too. They ate cotton candy and corn-dogs until they felt sick, and then Billy dragged the smaller boys off to ride the tilt-a-whirl. Tatum, to his credit, didn't puke like Bubba did. What he *did* do was poop in his underpants. He hadn't been comfortable with riding the ride anyways, and between the anxiety and the battered food, there'd been no hope of avoiding an accident. He hadn't even realized that he'd done it until he was getting off the ride; as thankful as he was to avoid getting any of Bubba's upchuck on him, that joy was replaced by burning hot humiliation. Billy had insisted on finding his dad, since Bubba clearly needed some help getting cleaned up, and so Tatum had to waddle halfway around the park with a hot pantload pressed to his bottom. When they'd finally settled in one place, where Billy could explain what happened to his brother, the smell of his full underpants finally began to waft. Billy first accused Bubba, who vigorously denied the allegation, but still got his pants checked. His mother would actually be the one to out him in front of everyone; she knew if someone pooed their pants, it was probably him. It'd been a shock to everyone else, but the secret to how frequently this was a problem was kept for the moment. There was only so long that could stay the case though, and after pooping himself on multiple occasions while around Frank, the man was getting frustrated at the boy. His mother would eventually mention his autism and suggest the relation; she still didn't know much about the condition, but she heard some of the less flattering stereotypes. Frank had readily agreed with her assumption, but his knowledge was even less solid. From what he figured, autistic was just the new politically correct term for 'retarded', and he openly shared that opinion. Ableist could be added to Frank's arsenal of offense, because he'd eventually use that term a lot when discussing Tatum or referring to him. It'd also be how he treated him. Shortly after that, Tatum had pooped himself while in Frank's truck, and that'd caused the man to go off about it. He'd used the word 'diaper' a lot in his rant about the 'retard shitting his pants' and Tatum could remember he'd been left crying in the backseat. His easily swayed mother, browbeaten by the domineering drunkard, had finally agreed that something needed to be done. That led to him standing bowlegged in the diaper aisle of a Walgreens, his bottom smothered in hot poop, while his mother held his hand and looked at the various options. He still used the toilet pretty frequently, so she at least decided that a real diaper was a bridge too far, but he needed *something*. Options at a small pharmacy in a podunk area weren't great. They had bedwetter pants, which would have been acceptable, but she was reluctant to choose something that wasn't rated for his real potty problem. She ended up having to get him something for adults, something that was 'extra small' in terms of waistline, but that still ended up seeming too large in terms of bulk. It was basically an adult Pull-Up; it was Depends, if he remembered right. That'd become his underwear while in Frank's presence, though his mother at least didn't mind him wearing regular briefs while at the motel. The shame of first having to put them on, and recognizing what they pretty much were, had been a massive blow to his already shaky confidence though. His bedwetting went from an infrequent rarity to something that happened multiple times a week, which meant the Depends went on before bed too. He started to poop his pants more frequently too, and was embarrassed to realize how much more pleasant the deed was to do in the padding. It was still humiliating, but it didn't feel nearly as gross or uncomfortable. This would go on until the day that his mother came home from a date and announced that she'd be marrying Frank, and that they'd move in with him and his kids. Tatum had been devastated by the news, but not because he had delusions that his dad would come back or anything, but because he recognized what a terrible person Frank was. He begged her to reconsider, he sobbed and accidentally crapped his pants, he fussed and had a full-on temper-tantrum meltdown. None of that helped matters one bit, and it only made her annoyed by his exceedingly childish behavior. The wedding was a small one, and remarkably cheap too. It would probably be the last time he wore something truly respectable, though the bulky 'incontinence briefs' underneath did stretch the definition of respectability, especially when he'd wind up being overwhelmed and repeatedly pooping on himself throughout the afternoon. Frank's first rule for Tatum upon moving in was that he'd be wearing those disposable briefs full-time with no exceptions. The Depends, and other similar adult Pull-Ups had been easiest to find in a pinch, but with an address, his mother finally got on the internet and found a generic youth version that he could wear instead. The fit was better, but they still felt cumbersome and humiliating to wear. His new stepbrothers had already known that he'd been wearing something similar, but now that he'd be sharing a little room with the pair, it felt unavoidable that they'd mock him at every given opportunity. Billy liked to give him wedgies and pants him, while Bubba was amused by just prodding at them and calling them diapers. His mother continued to work at the diner, and Tatum learned that Frank's income was through 'odd jobs'. That meant that Frank was the one home most of the day, lazing in front of the television or drinking beers outside with his vulgar friends. Supervision was lax, which Tatum had grown accustomed to, but Billy was still in charge of watching over him, for whatever that was worth. When his mother was at work, Frank lost all pretense of being nice, which was saying something for how rough around the edges he already was. Some days he swore he heard himself get called 'retard' more instead of his actual name, and his stepbrothers emulated that crass label to foist upon him. Tatum tried to keep to himself to avoid the denigration, but that was a tough task to handle. Early on, after he'd moved in and realized that Frank would be his primary 'caretaker' during the day, Tatum had tried to handle all of his accidents himself. Making a bit too much of a mess in the bathroom had stripped him of that right, and now he wasn't to change his own soiled garments under any circumstances; that'd be fine enough if another option existed, but Frank had made it more than clear that he wasn't going to change Tatum's dirty Pull-ups. That meant that if Tatum pooped in his pants, that he'd have to waddle around like that until his mother eventually got home from her shift. It encouraged him to work extra hard to avoid messing himself, but the diminishing returns on that were almost immediately apparent. Another lost privilege was that of pants, whenever he was at home, due to two reasons: first being that he couldn't be relied on to be honest about his accidents, and second because he'd had a couple of blowouts that'd dirtied his shorts. So, much like the other redneck rugrats that roamed the trailer park, Tatum too was constantly flashing his padding and often poopy padding at that. He was in good company, or at least the inner snark in him would roll his eyes and say, because this place was a breeding ground for delayed toileting. There were at least two or three kids who were Kindergarten age that hadn't been pottytrained yet, who ran around in their stained Pampers. Coincidentally, there was also a diapered boy who lived there, that actually *did* have some significant intellectual disabilities. His name was 'Spud', which Tatum was again left wondering if that was his real name or not, and he was a few years older than Tatum. Instead of 'disposable briefs', the young teen wore straight-up adult diapers, and thick ones too. Tatum was pretty sure that Spud was the type of autistic that Frank imagined whenever he heard the word; the diapered boy was probably on an intellectual level closer to a toddler or preschooler in most ways, and he was often just left to play outside in nothing but his dump-packed diapers. Tatum had been forced on more than one occasion to 'play' with Spud, which was degrading, but usually wasn't too bad. Spud's communication skills varied, and sometimes he rose to a level that made Tatum forget about his dimwitted nature, but then the older boy would intentionally defecate on himself while drooling, and such illusions would be broken. He'd only be living in the trailer park for a month thus far, so all of this was just the tip of the iceberg. Things were terrible, but school was just around the corner, and Tatum couldn't help but be excited for that. He didn't necessarily like school, but it'd be a daily reprieve from this slum that he'd been forced to become a part of. No longer would he have to wander around, his Depends or disposable briefs sagging and stained from a turd he'd pinched five hours prior, much like he currently was. The trailer park wasn't close enough for him to return to his previous school, but considering how humiliating so many aspects of his life had become, that was actually a plus. It'd be better to get a fresh start where he wasn't expected to still be living in a nice house in a normal neighborhood. One thing that he didn't yet expect was that his return to school would come with some possible additional changes... Frank had big plans for his stepson, and those plans involved getting disability checks from the government. To qualify though, Tatum would have to be considered a little more feeble of mind than he actually was; it meant he'd have to get the school to sign off on the boy being SPED worthy. Tatum's trashy transformation had only just begun.