Story #114: The Child Left Behind

Story #114: The Child Left Behind (Content Tags: Messy and wet training pants, humiliation, surreal, grade demotion, intellect in question, pottytraining) The warm lump in his disposable brief should have been all the indication he needed; the sticky solid, tautly trapped within, was the answer to his question. If that wasn't an acceptable explanation, then perhaps he could instead look at the half-empty package of the garments on his dresser, or the thundercloud stickers that adorned his chart in a steady sequence. At no point had he proven himself capable of anything more; if he wasn't able to keep a mess out of his pants for even two days in a row, then what business did he have to even ask such a question? 'Why do I have to wear these?' If someone didn't know the full backstory, then it'd be a fair inquiry to make. Landon was a boy at an age that made anything lower than underwear seem absurd It was telling that the puffy pull-up 'brief' was devoid of any real flavor, if it was something made for bedwetting, then it'd at least have designs all over that intended to emulate briefs. Being plain white was a red flag for function. Whoever this undergarment was intended for, there wasn't any concern being levied toward keeping things dignified or discreet. The appearance instead suggested something more clinical; it was something meant for a lighter level of incontinence, or for 'pottytraining' a much older kid than normal. There was still an implication that some sort of attempt was being put forth to use the toilet, since otherwise a genuine diaper would be the obvious choice, but it also implied that there was a delicate tightrope to walk between the two lines of being considered housebroken. Landon thought himself lucky to avoid the dreaded indignity of diapers. The furthering lack of independence that they would mean and the symbolic defeat they entailed were more than his ego could bear. It didn't seem real that such a fate could even be an option, but then he'd never thought he'd find himself back in 'pottytraining 101' either. It seemed even less real that he could be flunking. Flunking was actually what had gotten him to this point, though it hadn't been at pottytraining, at least not at the start. No, Landon had flunked fifth grade, and that'd been the catalyst that had set him down this path. His academic failure had been but the first domino to fall in a long chain that ended with him flinging further and further back. Landon had never been the studious type, and he instead preferred refuge in his own imagination during the time he spent at school. He preferred to doodle or look out the window, rather than to pay attention to what his teacher was talking about, and he'd been like that for his entire schooling career. The school system, devastated by decades of 'no child left behind' style policymaking, had never punished Landon for his laziness. He didn't do homework, he didn't study for tests, he didn't do even the most rudimentary of participation. Landon had discovered from a very early age that he'd be passed along whether he put forth an effort or not; it was literally impossible to be held back, regardless of how little he understood the material required for promotion. Landon really thought himself clever, that he could spend six years in grade school without ever learning a single thing. The less flattering truth was that it'd left him severely lacking in the mental skills that he was supposed to have by this point. He was functionally illiterate, could hardly do the most basic of mathematics, and couldn't even properly spell his own name. His deficits weren't glaring at a glance. The boy was spacey, but he didn't come across as dimwitted; he seemed socially mature enough to interact with his classmates, and he was able to laugh off his own ignorance to things as a joke. His peers had done shades of the same thing that he had, but none to the massive extent that'd left Landon little more knowledgeable than an average Kindergarten student. Landon had been a little excited to move on to middle school. His academic apathy wouldn't change, but the prospect of playing sports at a higher level did! He'd been all set to graduate elementary, without ever getting a lick of learning, and then something unexpected had happened... There was a political shake-up and an unexpected candidate won the presidency. Now, to an eleven year old boy, this should have been of no real note. Landon's only political opinions were the ones that he could parrot from his parents, and the other kids his age were no different, so a presidential election was meaningless in the abstract. Aside from hearing 'liberal this and that' from his father, he really had no idea that anything would change. What did change, almost immediately, was a sloppy reconstruction of the education system. There were good intentions, but the execution had been haphazard, and all the changing policies were about to retroactively ruin Landon's life. No more would kids just be 'passed along' to the next grade; failure was back on the menu. Landon didn't just flunk fifth grade though. According to his student record, he'd flunked every grade before that too! Imagine the conference, where his parents got the explanation of what that meant for their eldest son. He wouldn't be repeating the fifth grade, nor would he be demoted back to fourth; he, by law, would have to start back at the beginning. Kindergarten, and he didn't even get the benefit of the doubt that he was capable of doing *that*. The caveat for him to start Kindergarten again in the next semester, was that he had to do a crash course in summer preschool, and pass that to get readmitted. The alternative, which they'd at least rejected at the time, was to be formally 'tested' and evaluated for whether or not he was 'special needs'. While Landon had no actual intellectual disabilities, his knowledge gap was indistinguishable from a pantspooper in the SPED hall. It would seem at the moment though, that avenue would remain closed off. His parents were understandably pissed to discover how little schooling their son had actually participated in, but his little brother was excited to hear that they'd be in the same Kindergarten class in August. Landon meanwhile was in a state of shock. A few of his classmates were being made to repeat fifth and even some being sent back to fourth, but nobody was anywhere near the demotion he'd gotten. To say he was grounded was an understatement. Post-conference, back at their house, had been a dizzying display of lecturing, shouting, spanking, and the revoking of privileges. Their anger was at him, but they were frustrated with their younger son as well, since they'd been to that meeting beforehand. Aiden, who had been in preschool, was being retained if he couldn't get pottytrained by the end of the Summer. He had excelled in everything else, but toilet training was something that he'd been delayed in. Landon had been similarly delayed, but the standards hadn't been as high then. Comically, that'd been another caveat for Landon, that he had to prove he was toilet-trained, since it'd never been established on his file (since he'd missed the initial boat on it.) Since Landon would already be going through remedial preschool, since he needed to prove his toileting, and since they needed to get Aiden caught up, it seemed like multiple birds could be killed with one stone here. They informed Landon that he and his brother would both be shifting to training pants for the Summer, and that he needed to set a good example for Aiden. That's how he'd ended up back in 'Pull-Ups', but he really only had himself to blame for why he was still in them, or why his pottytraining chart signified that he'd pooped them every day in a row for the last month. He wasn't completely sure why it had been happening to him, but he was the one doing it, so who else could be blamed? In the first week of the Summer, he'd returned to wetting the bed at night, which was something he thought he'd shut the book on in second grade. By the second week, after he'd started his stint back in preschool, he was dribbling during the day. It was as if the shock of his demotion was still messing with his head, and his few actual skills were regressing back to where they'd once been. Proving himself pottytrained should have been the easiest part of his academic restart; he should have had that checkmark by the end of the first week of preschool. His little brother wasn't making any progress on that front either, but he was half the age that Landon was, and he was coming from diapers instead of underpants. He'd been playing with some matchbox cars on the play rug when the unthinkable had first happened to him. The boy had been so focused on his play, that he hadn't realized the urgency growing in his bowels. He knew that he'd leaned forward to rip a fart at some point, but it wasn't until minutes later that he realized there was something in his trainers. He heard a classmate mention something about smelling 'poop' and then it'd dawned on him. Grinding his bottom gently against the rug, he realized that there was something hot and mushy oozing up his butt-crack. The poopy smell was coming from *him*. He'd taken a dump in his pants and hardly noticed! His aloof style of play, where the imagination of his daydreams had him totally focused, had resulted in a failure more befitting of a two year old. It didn't take long for the teacher to notice the odor, and embarrassingly enough, Landon was one of the only kids in here that wasn't considered pottytrained yet. Him, his brother, and two other kids were in that boat, but only Landon was the one who was twice as old as everyone else here. He'd already been teased for that, and after being made to stand up for a bumcheck, he'd been more heavily mocked for dooking in his pants. The accidents became more frequent, and his parents were obviously upset about it. The one thing he had actually learned was degrading further and further; meanwhile, his little brother was actually seeing improvements to his own ratio. Aiden had used the toilet multiple times in the first couple of weeks that he'd been promoted from diapers, even without Landon being a good role model. Ironically, Landon's slippage was what encouraged Aiden to improve. Aiden saw how pitiful Landon had become, and the news of returning to Kindergarten instead of moving on to sixth grade was something that had stuck with Aiden as much as it had with Landon; the younger boy didn't want to be the same failure that Landon was, he didn't want to be an elementary dropout loser. Landon wasn't completely inept. He still used the potty, though not as often as he should be with the control that he *should* have. More and more though, he was only able to pee on the potty, while all his poopies wound up in his training pants. He used the potty just enough to keep himself in training pants, but the dribbling and the pantloads were fully obstructing him from any return to underwear. Aside from the toileting front, he was only 'passing' and not 'excelling' in the learning portion of preschool. Being eleven, he should have had absolutely no trouble with the truly basic lessons of the infantile program, but he'd let his brain rust for so many years, that even this drivel was somewhat challenging. How often had he needed to think about the ABCs or counting to ten? The embarrassment of being considered one of the less gifted students in the class full of four year olds was certainly enough to further break him. His younger brother, who had otherwise passed preschool aside from the potty part, was making him look like a drooling moron! How else should he feel? He was messing up his ABCs while having a load nestled in his britches, and the rest of the class was becoming increasingly proficient. By the second month, it was only him and his brother who hadn't finished being pottytrained. Halfway through that month, his brother's pottytraining chart was promising enough for a trial run at underwear, while his own was dangerously close to needing a full demotion back to diapers. Thundercloud upon thundercloud adorned his chart, each one telling a story about him soiling himself. He'd been so upset by the turn of events, by watching his little brother pick out a pair of briefs at the store, that he'd cried and messed himself. Such a humiliating contrast it'd been, for the five year old to be picking out underpants, while the eleven year old sobbed and squeezed a big smelly turd out into his training briefs. His brother's progress didn't falter from there, and Landon was left as the lone loader in the class of rugrats. With the preschool program coming to a close, Aiden got the gold star of approval for being Kindergarten-ready, but things weren't so positive for Landon. Landon had passed the academic portion, though just barely, but he hadn't proven himself proficient in pottytraining. He still tinkled in the toilet most days, but he'd been soiling himself almost every single day, sometimes more than once per day. This presented a problem for him to move on to Kindergarten like Aiden; it meant another meeting with the school, to see how it'd affect the oncoming semester. The previous discussion of 'special needs' had seemed silly back in May, but with enrollment right around the corner, the term was looking less ridiculous. Landon had barely squeaked by a passing grade for preschool, and he'd regressed back to a point where he couldn't be trusted to keep his pants clean anymore, so how did he *not* have 'special needs'? He might not have any diagnoses of intellectual or learning disabilities, but his abilities were indistinguishable from someone who did have those labels. Case-in-point was that he'd be the only student entering Kindergarten (for a second time) that couldn't be trusted to keep his pants clean. Only by the grace of his principal was he avoiding the actual special class, but it was made painfully clear that if he didn't do better this time around (and conclude pottytraining promptly) that he wouldn't be given that grace very long. That brought him to the present moment. It was only a few days before school would be starting back up again, and while his little brother was excited to start 'big boy school', Landon himself was terrified at the prospect. He would have to learn for real this time, and he'd have to do it with kids who were half his age, while in these disposable briefs... Which, speaking of, he'd recognized were once again packed with his own steaming excrement. The delayed reaction to a warm lump against his bottom had become signature in these last few months, and it never became easier to admit that he needed to be changed. The sticky solid currently giving his crinkly seat heft was a particularly large one, and a pretty stinky one too. "Mommy! I think Landon did a poopie!" Aiden had become quite the little helper since he'd been promoted to underpants. There was no longer any solidarity or honor between them; Aiden considered himself more capable, and therefore it was a responsibility of his to keep track of when his 'baby' brother's smelly butt needed attention. It couldn't be considered a betrayal if they weren't in the same alignment anymore. Procedure would follow the tattling, and that meant his pants came off and his padded backside got presented to whoever was tasked with checking. His waistband would be pulled back and the checker would get a view at the smoldering pile he'd so carelessly made, when he had every opportunity to use the toilet instead. It was a daily routine, and it always ended with him having to put yet another thundercloud sticker onto his chart. He'd be chastised, wiped, lectured, and then threatened with the possibility of being diapered. Sometimes a spanking found its way into the mix, if he was being particularly mouthy or if his parents were exceptionally irritated by his repeated failures. Tonight wouldn't see any spanking, but it would see yet another threat about being put back in diapers altogether. It was only because he still managed to pee on the potty most days that he'd escaped that indignity up to this point, but his progress with number twos had seen nothing, and it was getting more difficult to justify allowing him to wear something meant for active training, when his disposable briefs were used more like a diaper. He was being given an ultimatum now. He either needed to become fully pottytrained again by the end of year, or not only would he be moved to a 'special class', but he'd be fully moved to diapers as well. He had about five months to prove he was capable of at least *that*. That should have been a short order, and yet, it felt too daunting to properly imagine. For whatever reason his toilet skills had diminished as soon as he'd been told that he had to start over, as if his body took that statement more literally than his mind did, and he just felt too 'stupid' to have the confidence to take back control. He'd just spent the last three months in preschool with *toddlers* and he'd barely kept up with them; he'd been the last one standing in terms of not having undies, and his little brother had exceeded him at every turn! At some point along the ride, Landon had really got it in his head that he was too incompetent to do anything right. He'd been pottytraining for several years of his life, without incident, but that just felt like a fluke now. If he'd never actually passed even something as infantile as Kindergarten, then why should he consider himself capable of something as complex as pooping on the potty? Hope didn't always spring eternal, not for someone who'd seen their entire life collapse around them. Kindergarten would start in three days, and he felt woefully unprepared for its rigors. He was anxious about being seen as the 'slow' kid, and downright mortified at the inevitability of him getting caught in a poopy pull-up. How would he even be able to focus on the lessons if he was nervous the entire time? The writing was on the wall. Landon was going to flunk again; flunking was what he was best at. Learning had never been his forte.