Tale #2: The Cruelty of Inclusion

(Content Tags: Harsh realism, dimwitted protagonist, messing, diapers, humiliation, flashbacks-as-story, bullying) Academic inclusion hadn't been a mercy to him as a child; for someone who'd struggled in the way that he had, it had been anything but a mercy. Perhaps it'd let the adults in his life be able to pat themselves on the back, or it had given his parents a false perception of his capabilities, but his peers had not once been fooled. You couldn't just put a boy like him among those he shared a numerical age with, and expect that he wouldn't stand out as being different.  No, not just different, as that hardly gave a proper description; the kid who brought brussel sprouts in his lunchbox, or the one who was way too into 'My Little Pony', they were 'different', but him? He'd been 'retarded'. And not just in a way where his academic skills were a couple years behind the rest of the class, or that he had selective mutism; instead it'd been in the kind of way where he ate his own boogers and audibly pooped in his pants during the middle of class. Could a normal kid imagine that humiliation? To not be smart enough to be trusted to move past diapers, but not so dumb that he was effectively incapable of personal shame? It was the worst manner of middle-zone, and he'd been smack-dab in the middle of it for all his life. In all honesty, it would have been better if he'd been even dumber. If he'd been at a lower cognitive level, and noticeably so, then it likely would have put him at a place where he was pitied by the other kids, instead of mocked. If he'd been dumber, then maybe inclusionary education would have been tabled, and he would have instead been surrounded by actual peers in the special education classes. Too smart to avoid humiliation, too dumb to fit in. He'd started Kindergarten a year later than everyone else, and that'd been the first of many schooling mistakes made by the adults in his life. His very first step in a school, and he could already be pegged by the other kids as someone who was behind; he was the biggest one in his class, and also the only one who had a notable crinkling beneath his overalls. The only one who consistently would shit his Pampers in the middle of playtime, nap-time, snack-time, or story-time. The only one needing to get his sagging britches dealt with in the literal middle of the class, and by the exasperated Kindergarten teacher. The only one that always either smelled like talcum, lotion, and wipes, or like pee-pee and poo-poo. In those earliest days, it hadn't been a reflection of his intellect to the others, but only because that wasn't a way the other children thought; they'd instead looked at it through the lens of immaturity. They had no context for how a SPED kid should act, but they could relate his behavior to the toddlers in their life. And so they would call him a baby, and their insults would all spring from that argument. It would be this way throughout much of the earliest grades, with only it being by third, that his behavior would gain the additional labeling of 'dumb'. So then, he would become the 'dumb baby' in the class. He'd be taunted over his lack of pottytraining, he'd be asked if he still had a binky, and he'd be excluded on the same basis as he'd always been. As he got older, the baby part would become less used, and the topic of intellect would become more noted. This would be when the idea of the 'mentally handicapped' or 'special kids' would become more mainstream among his peers. Fifth grade was the first time he got called by the dreaded 'r' word. It'd been during the first week of class, and just the summer before, there had been an influx of migrants to the city he lived in; from what he could remember, there'd been a devastating hurricane that'd displayed a lot of people, and his cozy little city was a nearby option for relocation. That aspect was important, because it meant new classmates, and more than the normal amount. One decent thing about being a long-suffering inclusion student, was that he'd shared classes with a fairly steady group of the same kids since kindergarten; with such a length of time, the novelty of his foolishness and buffoonery had worn off, and people had started to leave him alone. The advent of a new slew of kids in their school system, that would throw a wrench in things. He couldn't remember what the subject had been, except for the fact that the classroom was quietly focused, but he could remember what he had done during it, and the aftermath involved: He pooped himself. His accidents weren't always big or loud, so there were plenty of times where only the eventual smell would tattle on him. This time however, the accident had been very noticeable and was undeniable. He was probably the only kid in fifth grade who still consistently wore overalls, and from what he remembered, he'd definitely moved onto thick youth-sized diapers by that point, if not as early as third grade. Had he been working on the same material as everyone else? Probably not. His workload was always different, to reflect his lower capability. So, maybe he'd been coloring a map or something, while the rest of the class worked on writing an essay, or maybe it was something else altogether; the important part was that the room was unbearably quiet, and he broke that silence with an eruptive performance. Pooping or peeing himself in those days was very natural; he lacked a solid foundation of control over his bladder or bowels, and his impulse control wasn't any better. So there had been no conception of consequences, especially when it was something he did every single day. A juicy, bubbling fart sputtered wetly in the bulky bottom of the diaper, like the ignition of a motorcycle underwater; breaking the wind broke the silence, and the immediate follow-up was the sound of heavy mud being flung into a plastic grocery sack. No part of the soundbite could possibly suggest that such a disgustingly complex series of noises could equate to simple flatulence. It was solely the compound sounds of defecation, plain and simple, and it was loud enough for everyone in the classroom to hear it very clearly. From what he remembered, it'd been a fairly large BM too; it was one that was mostly mush, and thus is took the shape of the container it'd been put into, which in this case had been the entire backside of his diaper. Absurdly hot, undeniably squishy, and quick to stink. Not that he minded the smell, but his classmates obviously didn't share that opinion. There was obviously laughter, as that was to be expected, but it would also be the first time he would be defined as the thing he would hear for the rest of his academic career: "Ugh! Did he seriously just crap his pants? What a frickin' retard!" Retard. The 'r' word. As spoken by a new student who had never been witness to the daily disruptions that his dirty diapers offered. He would hear that word a lot more that year, and he'd find that his classmates had a renewed interest in making fun of him, all fueled by the newcomers who hadn't yet found it trite. Middle school was arguably a worse affair for someone like him. Whatever bullying he had to fear, made the so-called social benefits of his inclusion a moot point. Much worse than the crude bullies though, was a new breed of student that resented him for different reasons. Nobody took elementary school seriously, but a small selection of kids were starting to take their education more seriously in middle school. Nerds, geeks, or just the pitiable products of tiger-moms, they sought knowledge and good test scores, and for some of them, they also cared about the legitimacy that their classroom could provide. A half-witted diaper-dooker was an obstacle to all of that. His presence was a disruption, not just for his noisy soiling accidents, but for his stupid questions and obnoxious behavior. His immaturity hadn't moved the dial much in an elementary school class, but it was a lot more noticeable as everyone was rapidly approaching their teenage years. The earlier comments about him being a 'baby' rang more true, now that the gulf appeared more pronounced. Unwittingly, he absorbed the most coveted resource of all: the teacher's time. That meant, that whoever was unfortunate enough to be put in the same class as him, wouldn't get the amount of attention that they were owed. The percentage of education that he was preventing was not negligible, and it was steeped in those complaints to follow, that he'd end up in several parent-teacher conferences. It had always been his parents who were most adamant about inclusionary education. So ultimately, it would still be their choice, since he'd never necessarily done anything badly enough to be forced into the SPED room. His parents didn't care about the well-being of the other students, which was understandable, but they also didn't seem to take his own wants into consideration; after so many years of being the class laughingstock, he would have loved to be placed somewhere that he wouldn't be judged. But no. He was too smart for SPED, but too dumb for GEN-ED. He was painfully placed on a borderline, where neither program would be a good fit. He could remember that he'd shit himself during the conference, and it hadn't been an accident that time, but an intentional self-sabotage to attempt to put his thumb on the scale. The copious loading of his diaper, the very loudly sloppy loading of his diaper, was meant to accentuate the points that the teacher was trying to raise. But it'd amounted to nothing. Nothing except sitting in a sticky pile of hot poop for the rest of the meeting. Eventually he'd move onto high school, and it was more of a crapshoot; some students had learned enough empathy, or had matured enough, that they no longer teased him. Instead, they treated him with condescension and pity, which almost felt worse. There were still bullies, and there were still the high-achievers who scorned his presence, but many had mellowed out. Ironically, it was his teachers who were less kind to him by this point. They were supposed to be teaching higher concepts to students who would soon be adults, and they had to suffer some pantspooping moron that fudged his big, dopey adult diapers in the middle of their lectures. Their exasperation, and in some cases, outright hostility, was far more damaging to his self-esteem than his classmates were capable of. High school would also be the time where his differences in experience would become more pronounced. Students were starting to date, they were learning to drive, they were getting part-time jobs, they went to parties, they were doing drugs and having sex, they were going to homecoming or prom, they were filling out college applications. The only thing he was filling out was the crinkly medical diaper under his sweatpants. His only parties were the childish parties of cousins that he had to attend. His only driving experience came at the wheel of a game controller. His only job was to throw away his dirty diaper after a bum-change. His dates were going out to lunch with his mommy. His drug was still candy, and the only thing approaching a sexual relationship was how he beat-off enough in his oversized, turd-stuffed Huggies to justify a pregnancy test for the poor diapers. Homecoming? Skipped. Prom? He went to it with his mom, and then he shit himself on the dance floor. The bottom line was that they were growing up, and he was lingering in some seemingly eternal infancy. Throughout elementary and middle school, there had at least been some things that he could relate with his peers about, but that felt like a thing of the past by this point. He still never got put in special ed classes, but due to his total lack of age-appropriate academic skills, he was failing often enough to be put in remedial classes for everything. Those classes would be where he was far more welcome, not by the teachers, but by the other students, who seemed happy enough to have someone to point at and say: "At least I'm not THAT dumb!" Well, except for the ones with fragile egos, who saw his presence in their shared remedial class as an affront to their pride. They feared guilt by association, and so if a pantspooping 'retard', who was literally waddling around in shit-packed tardpants, was in that class, then what did that say about them? If nothing else, the remedial classes felt like a good balance for him. He was able to make some friends with those who were academic losers in their own right, and he stayed out of the hair of the smart students. Eventually, people would start to graduate. Unlike his previous schooling experiences, he would not be handed such an achievement for simple participation, at least not yet. Thus began the years of being held back. It wouldn't be until he was nearly twenty-two, three years after the rest of his age group had graduated, that he earned a high school diploma. Well, at least something that approximated a diploma. He would technically walk the graduation stage with the others, all of whom were four years his junior, but he wouldn't be commanding the same kind of respect as the rest of them; they all had future prospects, they had aspirations to look forward to, such as higher education or starting a career. And what did he have? Nothing of the sort. College, even at the local level, would have been an even larger struggle than high school had proven to be, and what sort of career was he even fit for? To be the pitiable greeter of a big box store, while greeting customers with the flatulent filling of his seat? To work in sanitation, when he couldn't even keep his own trousers tidy? To dig ditches, whenever his body was doughy and weak? For every bit of relief that he had to gain from graduation, he could also measure out a portion of anxiety, and of remorse. At least high school had forced some form of purpose upon him, some manner in which achievement was within grasp. Leaving that behind, he'd be stuck at home full-time, and he felt as though his sense of independence would actually regress backwards. His parents didn't see it that way, or maybe they did and simply didn't care; they'd never made him feel like a burden, or given him a sense of urgency to grow. In many embarrassing ways, he knew they must still view him as a small child, and to them, his graduation from high school was every bit the adorable farce that graduation from Kindergarten brought. As it'd turn out, he wouldn't even be allowed the dignity of walking the stage as a fellow graduate; having been in high school longer than anyone else, his old bullies may have come and gone, but they had eventually been replaced by new ones who were younger and less empathetic toward him. It would be a pair of them that would help to deliver him one last humiliation, under the guise of apologizing for their immature behavior. The start of their crude plot would be before the ceremony even began, when one would apologize and gift to him a small, tainted baggy of chocolates, with the knowledge that his sweet tooth would override any sense of natural suspicion. The next part, which would come much later in the ceremony, would have the other one also coming to 'bury the hatchet' with a hug. Being so desperate to be respected in some way, the poor dimwit had allowed this apology to see itself through, and thus he hadn't noticed what was happening behind him. The back of his graduation gown was pinned up, putting his adult diaper on prominent display, and adding insult to injury, the boy who'd offered him the chocolates had snuck behind him to write upon the puffy white canvas with a permanent marker: 'Mudbutt Retard' with a crude drawing of a cliche poop symbol. They'd been clever enough to catch him behind the curtain of the stage, right before he was set to walk out, which would give no time for him to realize the last cruel prank they were to pull on him. When his name was called, he toddled out to get his so-called diploma, ignorant to his state of disarray, except for a peculiar draft chilling the back of his thighs. The crowd didn't immediately notice either, with only a few suppressed chuckles coming from the audience. The principal surely didn't notice, instead just smiling and handing over the rolled-up diploma to the young man. With a triumphant grin, the poor dolt had shot his hands up in the air to celebrate his graduation, and with that he knocked off his own cap; it felt behind him, and so he turned around to pick it up, squatting down... And the whole crowd was then able to see his diaper, and the mean-spirited scribbles on the back of it. What was worse? Those chocolates were finally working their magic on him. He'd already been tooting up a storm beforehand, and he'd fully acknowledged he may very well poop during graduation, but he hadn't cared all that much; he'd assumed his gown would veil any indiscretions, and the thickness of his diaper would muffle any foul odors. The acoustics of the auditorium were a perfect fit for the juicy fart he would rip, especially given the relative silence of the audience; as it sputtered wetly in his padding, he found himself paralyzed in place, his sphincter giving him no quarter. What would follow was a crude contest between farts, each one trying to outdo the last in all possible categories, and with each one bringing forth a squirt of molten stool. He was no stranger to publicly filling his pants, quite obviously, but never quite like this. There were hundreds of onlookers, hundreds of cameras, and he was having what felt like the most explosive diarrhea of his life. There was no way to stop it, and as he heard the cruel laughter responding to it, he finally recognized that the draft on his legs carried another meaning. So as the diaper swelled grotesquely with soft filth, staining a darker brown with every gassy torrent of poop, he desperately reached his hand behind him in an attempt to pull down the back of his gown. He used the wrong hand. His mind was so disrupted, so distracted, that he sent back the hand still clutching his diploma. His coordination, his dexterity, they had always been lacking, and so with a rudimentary motion, he accidentally hit the one wrong angle he should have been careful to avoid. The bottom tip of the diploma went directly down the back waistband of the diaper, right into the bubbling cauldron of shame that was still noisily percolating, and in his shock, his fingers uncurled from it completely. Before he could attempt to correct this misfire, the worst cramp yet came, and with it was an absolute backseat flooding of biblical proportions. Whatever clean square inch of the diaper's interior was rapidly claimed by the magmatic tsunami of shit, the protective garment grossly ballooning and sagging several inches. His precious diploma went from damaged to destroyed, and whatever portion might have been salvageable, was then ruined when he lost his balance and fell square on his squishy rump. One last parade of shame, a humiliation congo, and it would be how they all forever remembered him. The school would mail him a new diploma in the coming months, and his parents would try to comfort his ego in the aftermath of the day, but the moment was forever seared into his mind and was unfortunately immortalized as several viral online videos. And so he would lay flat for the foreseeable future. He would give up and live up to the low expectations that were placed for him. Finally in adulthood, he would revert to living like a toddler who hadn’t yet started school: eating, sleeping, playing games, and pooping in his diapers. Inclusion had been cruelty for him, despite every intention to be the opposite.