The Day That Ended With A Duct-Taped Diaper
By: Maryjo Wagner
Tags: Baby Care, Family, Memoir, Humor, Diapers

The Day That Ended With A Duct-Taped Diaper

The risk of having my Dad babysit

When my Dad comes into contact with any one of his grandkids, or any child for that matter, he suddenly loses all connection with time, place, and usually, the first two levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs. The kids will be stimulated to the point of paralysis, lack of proper meals will spike and deplete their blood sugar levels like heartbeat blips on an EKG, and full diapers will fester until the closures can’t hold the weight and the diaper gives way.

In 1994, when my niece Morgan was eight and her younger sister Lexi was two, my Dad traveled to Wisconsin for a visit in early summer. My sister Bridget and her husband wanted to have a golf day together so Dad jumped at the opportunity to have the girls to himself.

Although Bridget was hesitant to leave our “man child” Dad in charge, she was soothed by the idea that Morgan was perhaps old enough to help Dad if he needed it. She spent considerable time teaching him about the inner workings of the car seat, the stroller and the diaper bag — a long, drawn-out process requiring her to shout “Dad” every few seconds to redirect his attention from the girls to the lesson at hand.

An ominous sign was Dad’s inability to install Lexi’s car seat into his 1980s white Mustang convertible. After 30 minutes of muttering “Shit!” “God damnit!” and “Son of a bitch!” Morgan stepped in and completed the job for him.

No sooner had Bridget left than Dad packed up the girls for a road trip. Happily bumping along, Dad was in his element; the sun was warming his balding head, smoke was swirling from the bowl of his battered corncob pipe in his mouth, and his 16-ounce mug of decaf coffee was vibrating in the cupholder. He relished the sounds of the girls squealing in the back as the wind whipped Lexi’s red and Morgan’s brunette locks around their heads. All was going swimmingly.

And then they stopped at a video store.

Within five minutes of perusing the shelves, Morgan reported to Dad: “Lexi stinks.” Lexi was happily pulling video boxes off the shelves. When Dad knelt down to confirm for himself, he not only smelled the distinct odor, the back of her once-yellow shorts resembled a bruised banana.

Picking Lexi up, Dad barged into the lone bathroom on offer, which was the size of a single stall. He briskly calculated his changing options while trying not to gag from the stench. The white-tiled floor was strewn with used paper towels and food wrappers. The single ceiling light barely lit the beige room, the toilet seat hung askew, the lone sink was the size of a birdbath, and there was no changing table. Dad chose to change Lexi, who was about 30-inches tall, in the 6-in x 8-in sink.

While Dad scrambled to remove Lexi’s shorts, which had tightened from the weight and bulge of her dense diaper, he became acutely aware that he was using the only bathroom in a public place and the windowless room was beginning to smell like a barn.

“Morgan, find a clerk, and ask for some room deodorizer.”

As Morgan left the door ajar, Dad could hear her say, “My Grandpa needs help. He says my sister has a big load in her diaper. He’s changing her in the bathroom, and it really stinks.”

Morgan returned with deodorizer and Dad gassed half the can into the air, mixing the stench with the equally pungent aroma of wildflowers.

He managed to remove Lexi’s steaming diaper from her body but it was a struggle to maintain its contents within the well of the fabric. Consequently, the room became a shit storm — in the sink, on the floor, and on his shoes. Lexi was practically brown from the waist down.

Dad panicked. Completely forgetting that Bridget had supplied him with a whole box of diaper wipes, he grabbed the first thing he saw: toilet paper.

Standing Lexi up in the sink, Dad asked Morgan to hand him some toilet paper. She held out two little squares like they were poison.

“Morgan! I need way more than that!” Dad yelled. “Take the whole roll!”

Two women came upon the scene in the bathroom. Their eyes bulged and mouths fell agape. Their faces awash in disgust, lips pursed like they had just eaten a lemon, one asked Dad if he needed any help; he declined, of course.

Dad frantically tried to clean Lexi up. With the urgency of a surgeon trying to stem blood, he kept his eyes and one hand on Lexi, stretching out his free hand every few seconds to yell “Paper!” to Morgan, careful not to cause permanent bruising as he twisted and turned Lexi in the confined basin. Five toilet rolls later, Lexi, the sink and the taps were suitably cleaned.

Dad took a deep, cleansing breath, exhaling his satisfaction with making it through the first phase of diaper changing. Lexi was astonishingly calm and content, playing with her fingers and staring at Dad with her moss-green eyes.

Digging into the diaper bag, he found a shiny, new diaper and held it in his hands as he tried to recall Bridget’s how-to-put-on-a-diaper demonstration. He stretched it open, slid it through Lexi’s legs, and reached for the sticky tabs on the sides to close the diaper around her. The tabs weren’t there. His fingers scrambled around Lexi’s back and her sides, feeling for the smooth, rectangular shape of the tabs, all the while muttering, “Where the hell are the sticky things?”

Crawling his fingers around to her belly, he found the flaps on the underside of the material lying on her belly. (Finding them in that position should have been a clue that they weren’t in the right place). Pulling out the sticky tab on each side, he stretched the flaps around Lexi’s back to attach them, but they didn’t stick. That’s because the diaper was backward AND inside out, which Dad failed to understand. He tried again. Unfortunately, he used too much force to yank the tabs and pulled them off entirely, removing all adhesive material from the diaper.

But, he was determined to salvage it. He turned it round and round on Lexi’s body, trying to find a smidgen of stick to close the fabric. Each time it fell away from her skin. Exasperated, he turned to Morgan and said, “Get some tape.”

Morgan dutifully returned with a roll of duct tape.

Dad ripped up the end, placed it on the front of Lexi’s diaper and just like wrapping the curved end of a hockey stick, he proceeded to wrap the duct tape in a continuous ring around the diaper, laying so many crisscrossing strips that the diaper was practically invisible.

With the package wrapped, Dad attempted to redress Lexi but it proved rather difficult to pull the shorts over the three-inch-thick bulk of tape. So he forced them up halfway and tugged her shirt over the top to cover the disaster underneath.

Morgan returned the tape to the clerk and they all bolted out of the video store — without a single video.

When they returned to Bridget’s house, Dad carried Lexi up the entryway stairs to the living room in her car seat. This raised an immediate red flag to Bridget who knew Lexi could walk in by herself.

“Why is Lexi in her car seat?” Bridget asked. “Is she okay?”

“Grandpa is worried her diaper will fall off,” Morgan replied. “Grandpa had LOTS of trouble with the diaper.”

Looking sheepish, Dad set Lexi down on the brown carpeted floor and said, “Yes, I had a bit of trouble working the diaper.”

Bridget grabbed Lexi out of the car seat, laid her on the floor, and lifted up her shirt to find her shorts. She paused at the sight of gray. She yanked off Lexi’s mottled-brown shorts and discovered the duct-taped diaper.

“OK, Dad,” she said. “This I have to hear.”

For the next 20 minutes, Dad proceeded to retell the escapade while Bridget cut Lexi out of her diaper.