Product Tester Ch3

Chapter 3
Chapter 3

Chapter 3

If Carol’s chiropractor had been in the room, he would have had a heart attack. When Jeff spoke those words, four heads turned around like whips. Three of those heads were on necks of people with bodies WAY over 30. I hardly felt the torque, but everybody else had to be hurting.

"Jeffrey Allen Reynolds, WHAT in tarnation are you doing here?"

The mouth that moved was Nancy’s, but the voice was one I had never heard from her before. She was livid.

Even Jeff was a little taken aback by the explosion. "Gosh, mom, I needed to come get a couple of my Xbox games. Sorry to disturb you."

I knew that Jeff was either going to get an earful for showing up during our clandestine trials. Sooner or later was the only question. I liked Jeff, In the time I had known him we had to come to a mutual respect.

I tried to diffuse the situation.

"You think so, Jeff?" I asked as I walked over toward him, picking up my sweatpants on the way. "Your mom thinks they are going to be good for the toddler crowd. Tell her what you think."

I did a slow turn. I was doing my damnedest to keep from looking as embarrassed as I felt.

He stopped and turned back. His eyes darted from me to his mom, dad, then Carol. Then he locked onto my form like a drowning man to a lifeline and gave a studied expression.

"You know, you can’t even tell that you have any padding in it."

He had tried, but that was not the right thing to say.

"That is because he isn’t even padded,” exclaimed his mother. "Go on, get your games and go to your friend’s house. Shoo."

With a shrug, and a smirk to me, he turned and took three steps at a time going up the steps. The door closed behind him and wee were once again just four of us.

"I am so sorry Grant. I would never have dreamed he had any reason to come back."

I attempted to brush off the apologies from Nancy. I assured her that one could never totally control a teenager.

I knew that this was going to be a good time to make a break for home and started to put my sweat pants on.

"Grant, dear?"

I looked at Carol as I pulled my sweat pants in place. "Yeah?"

"Um, you still have the diaper on hon."

I stood frozen, my face feeling suddenly very warm. Under my sweatpants were my normal underpants AND the prototype that Nancy had just sewn. Amidst the commotion of Jeff’s return and trying to get him out of trouble, the extra apparel had gone unnoticed. By me, but not by everyone else.

With a quick apology I started to slip the sweatpants back down, but I was quickly stopped.

"No, please grant," rushed Mrs. Reynolds, "if you are that comfortable in it, just wear it home. See how it feels. They are supposed to be the softest and easiest breathing materials available, they should feel very natural."

I scoffed. "Natural? A diaper?"

Carol piped up. "Now Grant, they are almost like your little jockey pants. There might not be a fly, but you can get out of them just as easy with those snaps. Be a dear and just see how they are on the walk home?"

Did you ever feel like you were on some cliff and EVERYTHING inside says you should leap for the solid ground? Get as far as you can from the edge? Run from danger?

I want anyone reading this to know that the materials available today are amazingly light and airy. They breathe like cotton fiber and one can hardly tell that one is wearing them.

Unless you are walking home in these materials that are sewn into the shape of a diaper. Unless you think at some moment the yard will fill with people that will think you look cute in a diaper.

I walked my normal slow walk across the backyard and through our garden gate. I can’t say it felt any different, because it didn’t. Under my sweats I had trouble noticing I was wearing anything out of the ordinary.

When we got home, I went upstairs to our room, removed the dreaded thing and got ready for bed.

Carol and I were sleeping within half an hour. My wife took the diaper with her when she went to work the next morning and I never saw it again.

2 weeks later

Jeff, having finished mowing and trimming our yard for the week, was having me look over his mother’s website. He had given it a few innovations, a little bit of flair to make it eye catching and we were attempting to track down a bug in the javascripting.

Having changed a few lines of code and adding a little here and there, we sat back and admired it.

The site was already getting a few hundred hits a day and orders were beginning to stack up.

For most products.

Looking over the hit reports, I noticed a substantial difference in the number of hits for the newborn and medium sized diapers but very few for the pages carrying larger sizes.

I asked Jeff what could be causing such a noticeable difference.

"If I tell you what my mom says is the reason, you have to swear you won’t tell her I said anything," he responded.

Having agreed to his request, he continued. "We have hardly sold any of those, and the hit counts are way down because we don’t have any pictures of them...like.... on a baby. Until someone buys some and sends us pictures of their kid wearing mom’s diapers, we only have the pattern samples to show."

It must have been evident that I get it. He grabbed the mouse and clicked on the page showing medium diapers currently available. There was little Amber in dozens of pictures, naked except for the pocket diapers she was modeling in each shot.

Next, Jeff clicked on the "large" page and we were treated with swatches of fabric. Different patterns and colors. Boring does not describe.

"So you are telling me your mom would sell a lot more of her diapers if she had some pictures of babies wearing them?"

Jeff nodded, avoiding eye contact.

"And she won’t get any pictures until she DOES sell some."

More nodding.

"Is your mom afraid to ask me to wear them and have my pictures taken?"

Jeff finally looked up.

"She is REALLY embarrassed about what happened the other night. She told me not to mention it, ever. You have to promise she won’t find out, OK?"

"Just how many of that size diaper does she have already made and ready to go?" I inquired.

"Don’t know," came the reply. He added a shrug.

I sat back and pondered. I was not enjoying the thought processes currently going through my toddler brain.

"I have total access to the information we just looked at. You don’t have to worry about that leaking. But I do need to know something, are your folks planning on going out this evening?"

Jeff told me they were not, as far as he knew. I said I had to get things ready for dinner and I just might see him a bit later that evening.

He left, going out the front gate and around to his own front yard. That was a trek I never took, as it would mean someone might see me. A fear that was very overpowering.

Most of the time.

I watched him go, then grabbed the phone and called my wife. I left her to work out the details for the evening’s work, and I went to kitchen to pre-heat the oven.

I was terrified.

***

I spent the remaining time before Carol arrived at home catching up on e-mail from clients and friends. Jumped into a few chatrooms to see who might be available. Generally kept myself busy until 6:00.

The table was set and dinner was ready to come out of the oven when the garage door opened and her sport sedan rolled into its place. Carol walked in and I flashed her a winning smile. She set the bags she carried on the counter and went to change for dinner.

The intrigued look on her face made me very aware I caught her off guard with my suggestion. She returned dressed in a stylish running suit and we finished preparing dinner together.

We were both rather quiet as we sat, both of us glancing at the clock on occasion.

It was almost 7:00 when the front door bell rang. We had finished the dishes and had taken to the couch in the TV room by then. Carol got up and opened the door. I heard small take as she returned. Nancy entered the room, arms full of bags.

This was not quite what I had expected.

"Where is Chuck?" I inquired, trying not to sound ill at ease.

"Oh Chuck. Well, tonight is his bowling night, Grant. He said he really wanted to help out but there was no one to take his place tonight. He wants you to know that he did his best."

I’ll just bet. Just when I could use another guy’s support, albeit he was not all that impressive the last time I tried to count on him, he has to go bowling.

Such is life.

Nancy was busying herself with all the stuff she had brought over and was beginning to lay out her wares across the floor.

"Now first thing, Grant, I want to know if Jeffrey had anything to do with you helping me out like this." Nancy fussed with the items, not looking up.

"No, we never even talked about sales," I lied. "We were looking at layout and hit counts. It became very obvious to me that you had good draw to some of the site and there was something...or someone...missing in others. I figure," the words at this point were a little more difficult get my mouth to eject, "if I could help in any way, I should offer."

As I spoke, I watched her dump the second bag out on the floor by the neat rows of diapers she had made. A mixed up pile of rags fell out. They looked like rags. Scraps. Just a bunch of strips of cloth.

Mrs. Reynolds finally sat back on the couch and sighed.

"Where shall we start?" she said as she looked at Carol.

Carol looked at everything on the floor, and then up at me. With a shake of her head she just said, "Whatever you want to do, Nance, you go right ahead."

They both looked at me and then back at each other.

When they started to giggle, I began to have second thoughts.

"What?"

Nancy smiled. "Sorry Grant. I just am not used to asking someone your size what to do next. I am not sure how to start. Tell you what. Let me show you how these work, and then you can tell me what you will be comfortable starting out in."

I ended up kneeling on the floor while she lifted a diaper and brought it closer.

She showed me the design of it, how the snaps worked. Some of the diapers had Velcro to hold it together. At this point she sifted through the rag pile and pulled out 3 thick strips of white material.

These were slipped into the "pocket" at the back of the diaper. This was to be the absorbent part.

Absorbent. That word was one I had never thought would be associated with an item of clothing I was to wear.

I may have been in there for a purpose, but I only saw that it made the thing THICK.

"OK, Nancy, let me get a few things cleared up. I said you could take pictures of me wearing your diapers. I know these are made to be functional because REAL babies need them. Do they need to be stuffed when I wear them for the photos?"

There was more giggling. I was beginning to have a deep distaste for Chuck, who had left in a time of great need.

"Oh yes. It’s the pictures I have of Amber in the most stuffed diapers I can get that sell the most. Did you think I was going to make it this thick?"

I nodded. I was not going to say anything else stupid at this point.

Nancy pulled herself together somewhat. "This is actually only half as stuffed as in the picture on the home page. I had...planned...on making it that thick, but if it makes you uncomfortable I understand."

I looked at Carol. She had that...smile. She smiled at me with her eyes sparkly.

"Fine. Sure. Go ahead." I couldn’t take my eyes off that lovely face. My wife was the most wonderful person in the world. I was helping her client, right?

Carol glanced away, breaking the spell. I followed her look to where Nancy was pushing another handful of the cloth strips into the garment. I began to doubt that I would be able to walk if I had that thing on.

"Do you want me to leave the room while Carol puts it on you?" asked the now slightly blushing seamstress.

This was one of the details that had been of greatest debate in my head. I had tried to think of a way to insure my wife would be the one doing it.

Diapering me. Can you even believe it? I was going to wear all these diapers AND get photographs taken of me in them.

Where was my head? What was I thinking?

I stood and tried to be as casual as I could as I slid off my sweatpants once again.

"No no. You know what you are doing. Carol can watch and maybe she can do a few after seeing you put them on."

I stood in my little jockeys once again. I stepped over next to Nancy and asked her where I should lie down. She just patted the floor at her feet.

"You are being VERY brave and grownup about this," said Carol.

"Maybe that is because I AM grownup, dear," I said just a hint of sarcasm. ""It’s just hard to tell when one is living in a body that usually wears what Nancy is about to put me in."

I closed my eyes and waited for Nancy to start. She grabbed my feet and expertly lifted them into the air with one hand. My underwear-covered butt followed. I swung from her grip as I imagined her slipping the bulging diaper under me.

As she lowered me onto it, I felt the fabric compress from my slight weight.

The worst part about the worst part is that it makes the deepest impression on a person. Nancy placed my legs on the floor, wide apart and brought the bulky garment up between them.

I could not suppress the groan of embarrassment that escaped my throat. And just when I thought I was feeling the full effect of all that stuffing, compressing groin, she carefully pressed down on the mass of it to keep it in place. I felt like I was being wrapped on cloth a foot thick.

Nancy did not even notice my distress.

She busied herself snapping the sides and tucking around the edges.

She kept this up for a little bit. First she worked on one leg, and then the other. A few minutes of this finally made me take some action. I opened one eye and glanced at my wife. There was a hint of concern on her face.

"What now?" I asked, looking up at the woman attending to my midsection.

"Um, well, it seems that when we have the diaper stuffed I can’t make your underwear not show. When we did the fitting we did not have anything in it and it worked just fine." She sat back and pondered the predicament.

"Meaning you are about to ask me to wear these things with no underwear, aren’t you?" I lay my head back on the floor and closed my eyes again. "This is not happening.

Silence. LOUD silence. I was breathing raggedly and I could hear the uncomfortable shifting of the two women. They did not know what to do or say and I knew that if I spoke at that moment the evening’s activities would come to a halt.

Inhaling deeply, I rolled over and attempted to get up. I had not considered how roly-poly I was, dressed this was. I got on my knees, and then up on feet and hands and pushed till I was able to stand.

Ignoring the odd smiles that greeted me, I did my best with stubby fingers to decrease the visibility of the underwear I so desperately hoped to be able to keep wearing.

The girls were right. It showed. Nothing I did kept it all tucked away.

I headed toward the guest bedroom. "Carol," I called over my shoulder, mustering all the dignity left in me, "come diaper your husband."

As I opened the door and left the TV room I could hear sighs of relief and at least one of the women clapped.

Well great. At least someone was happy with how this was going.

I did not turn to face my wife until I had heard her close the bedroom door behind her. By that time I was more in control of the conflict going on inside my head. I leaned against the bed, staring up at the woman I had towered over when we vowed to "love, honor and cherish".

"I’m really sorry about being a pain, Carol, but when I offered to do photos it never dawned on me that I was going to lose my underwear and everything."

My wife came over and knelt on the floor in front of me.

"Honey, both Nancy and I know what a sacrifice this was for you. Your pride is taking a real hit here. You always wanted to remain the adult that you REALLY are on the inside. Nancy said if you wanted to drop the whole thing, she would understand and go home."

That was not what I wanted. I really did not know what I wanted. I wanted OUT of the diaper I was wearing. I wanted to help my neighbor, my wife, myself. Too many thoughts were rolling around inside my "widdle head".

I inhaled deeply and swallowed hard. Looking Carol in the eyes, I lay down and spread my legs, giving her full access to my tiny diapered butt.

"Anything your client needs me to do, I will do it. I am yours."

She looked at me oddly for just a moment, and then proceeded to unsnap the diaper. "Anything, you say?"

I smiled and nodded.

"You may regret that offer someday."

"Right. What can be worse than being put into a diaper?"

***

By the time we returned to the TV room, I was a lot more educated on all that things that "normal" babies were subjected to.

Wearing this diaper was nothing.

I stepped out and showed the garment to Nancy. She gave it an approving look, made a few adjustments and snapped a few photos on her digital camera.

Carol and I had done a couple changes when I finally decided that if Nancy would have the decency to turn her head while I was "changed” I would let my wife do it right there in the TV room. Save time. Get it over with.

Things were going along swell. We had done eight of the twelve different diapers she had premade. I was just standing up wearing the 9th, what Nancy called an overnight diaper, when a snap on one side came out and the entire thing slid down my legs.

For a split second, one that felt like about a billion years, I stood there naked and a jaybird. Then put my hands over myself in an attempt to regain some of my composure.

Nancy never missed a beat. She stepped over, grabbed the diaper and slid them back up my legs. Quickly she slid a hand inside for support and resnapped the fastener that had failed.

She had backed up and was getting the camera ready before Carol or I could even react to what she was doing.

Nancy looked up, first at me and then at my wife. Suddenly she realized what she had done and she gasped as she covered her hand with her mouth.

We all burst out laughing. Finally the tension of the evening had been relieved. We were just three adults working together on a project.

I stood for more pictures and the women got into a detailed conversation about warranty and problems with the product. As her financial provider, she wanted to know how things in Quality Control were going.

Nancy remarked that the only real issues were loose snaps (like the one that had just exposed me) and leaking issues.

"In which sizes?" asked my wife, becoming intrigued.

"Oh goodness, the smalls and mediums had a few design issues at first but those were taken care of. I will have to wait until the larges sell a few to see if any changes need to be made. Once the first couple dozen are out, we get a bunch back and fix any problems."

I was standing next to the wall, trying to make a "cute" pose for the camera. We had done some of me standing, some crawling, and some just lying on the floor. I could see the wheels turning inside my spouse’s head.

"How would you know if they leak?" she asked in a slow and measured voice.

Funny, I thought, the tension seemed to be building in the room again.

"Well, a baby has to pee in them, of course," answered the other woman.

I was looking for a way to stop this line of questioning. I never did like tension.

"What if Grant tested them for you?"

Yep. Tension.

Nancy had been readying the next model. She halted, almost froze. I looked at her more closely. Definitely froze.

"Oh Carol. I would never ask him to do that."

Whew. Sigh of relief.

"He would be the perfect one to test it, Nance. Just leave all these here and he could report how they do."

It was like I wasn’t there. I was hundreds of miles away. I tried to get back to that little room, to stop this silly line of talk. My body was not obeying my commands.

I opened my mouth to attempt a rebuttal. Carol caught me off-guard with her next question.

"Do you have to pee right now, Grant?"

Oh god...

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