✅ Potty Genius [NaNoWriMo 2022]

Twenty-Five

¿Did the Teddy badge have unexpected effects?

It was hard to tell while I was wearing it, because everything seemed to be surprising. I was happy to hear the door open when Dad came home, as if I hadn't been expecting him at about the same time every day for years. I giggled at TV ads which had a silly twist at the end, and I actually jumped at the jumpscares in the next episode of STP: Redux. Whenever I found myself doing something like that, being more giggly or more excitable, I worried that somebody was going to notice my odd behaviour. That was the only part that made me nervous

But it was all within the spectrum of normalcy. That seemed to matter. It wasn't making me do completely weird things. It wasn't even making me do things I would never do. I just laughed out loud at jokes that wouldn't normally have been funny enough to trigger that response, or got more scared by scary bits on TV. Maybe I was a little more clingy, too. I might have spent time with my family when I didn't really need to, but they weren't going to say anything about that. They probably wrote it off as me just wanting to spend time with them as much as possible because I was going to be away from home soon, living in some weird dorm building at university. I would miss my daddy, so it was only natural to spend more time doing things with him before then.

I cuddled my teddies as well. That wasn't even a new thing. I'd done it occasionally over the last week or so. But now, when I was alone in my room I would feel guilty if I left them sitting by themselves on the bed, instead of having one in my arms. They were my friends, and I wanted them to be happy. A couple of times, I even caught myself about to take Methplease downstairs with me for dinner.

I didn't get a new badge during my day of setting extra reminders; and I finished the day without any real problems. The day after was just as easy again. I might even have found myself laughing and singing, when there was nobody around to criticise me. This wasn't the same as wetting myself, or having to use an app before I could use the bathroom. This actually made me feel good. It was fun in a way, and I might have wondered if I would have wanted this to continue. Maybe rather than undoing the hypnosis completely, I could ask Theo to just let me use the bathroom as normal. If the badges could do things like this, then I might have wanted to keep on playing the game a bit longer.

Okay, so I might have jumped up and down and cheered a little "Yay!" when I answered the door to a delivery guy on Thursday afternoon. And I might have done a twirl with a pack of diapers in each hand on the way back to my room. But it was good to be happy then, because I'd managed to buy diapers without anyone else seeing that I had them. They had come in an unmarked cardboard box, so there would have been no reason for somebody to guess even if they had seen the delivery. So now Potty Genius had made things so much easier for me. It had given me a badge that made me extra happy all the time, and it had also given me a way to buy diapers without picking them up in the supermarket, which made it even less likely my friends would ever know that I wasn't potty trained.

¿So did you stick with the teddy badge?

For a few days, at least. I worked out that it was less likely to cause a problem than any of the others, and it hadn't caused any kind of incident, so I didn't see any reason to stop wearing it. But when it came around to Saturday, I ran into Elsa in town, and she commented that I was more giddy and giggly. She said I was like a little kid again, which I took as a compliment on restoring my hair to how it looked in my old photos. But when I got back home, I started to have second thoughts.

What if the badge was affecting me somehow? What if it was affecting my ability to tell if something was wrong? So as it got close to bedtime, I chose a different one. I stared at the badges for ages, trying to cause one of them to be less risky just by force of will, but none of them seemed positive. I didn't particularly mind the effects, but I was sure that somebody might say I was weird or something, and I didn't want to get in any kind of trouble.

On Saturday afternoon, the app itself gave me a hint. In a way, anyway. The challenge for the morning had been to prepare properly so that I could use the 'accident' button in a public place, and not be noticed. It suggested in the park or a mall; but I wasn't quite sure what the definition of 'public' would be for the purposes of the challenge. In any case, it was reaching one of my hard limits. The challenge wanted me to have a stinky diaper in public, and there was no way I was ever going to do that.

"What do you think, Meth?" I asked the teddy. "It wants me to make stinkies in the park, and I'm not gonna do that. So I gotta wear diapers tomorrow for the punishment timer. And that means if I wear the badge that makes me wear diapers, I can have a little break from the teddy one. And I'll have to wear them anyway, so it's like I don't have to do anything!"

The little teddy nodded when I tickled his tummy, so I assumed he agreed. I wouldn't do that challenge after all, so I would have to cope with a potty timer set to a random time instead; and I would have to wear diapers. I promised Methplease that when I knew what time the timer was going to start, I would put diapers on first, and change my badge to the diaper one. Then I could see what the teddy badge was doing to my head, and decide which was the best one to stick with.

¿Did that all go according to plan?

It was near enough, I think. The biggest surprise was when the day rolled around and the app warned me that I hadn't completed my daily challenge. I waited as long as possible before reading the notification, but it just kept nagging at me. So eventually I gave in and tapped the message. And I really didn't expect what it showed me.

==> 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎 𝚏𝚊𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚢 (𝚜𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎):

----> 𝙿𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚢 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚛 💧 𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝟸0-𝟷00 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚜

----> 𝙿𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚢 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚛 💩 𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝟷𝟷𝟸0-𝟷𝟷80 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚜

That wasn't what I had expected; and it was almost as bad as the challenge I had refused to complete! I guess it was dumb of me to think that the penalty would be the same every time, but this was an extra degree of humiliation that I totally wasn't ready for. And both of the timers had so much variability in them that I wouldn't be able to just sit in the bathroom for that time. I could try going into the bathroom at the start of the timer, and then coming out and going back in again when it forced me to move, but there was no guarantee that would work. I had no choice but to wear diapers for a couple of hours, just in case it showed me that little spiral with an instruction on at the worst possible time.

About the only silver lining this time was that the second timer was due to go off sometime around midnight. By then, Mummy and Daddy would probably be pretty tired and would have gone to bed already. I would be in my room, with nobody else around. So nobody would have to know what kind of mess I'd gotten myself into. I could clean myself up in privacy, and pretend it had never happened at all. I wondered if I would have to tell Dr Theo; but I decided against it. That would just make me blush even more, and she was supposed to be curing all this anyway. She didn't need to know about one more little problem.

I made a note of when the timers were likely to go off, and decided I should probably change into a diaper right away. I pulled the last one out of the pack, put it on, and pulled on my sweatpants to cover it again. The empty pack went into the bin, and I decided to look at the new ones I'd been delivered, to see if they were any different. I had chosen the same brand, but in the end I'd decided to let the app choose the pattern. They were all cute, and I didn't know all of them, so I thought I might get a nice surprise. These ones had a pattern of princesses on; but these princesses were riding around in flying saucers. I pulled one out and looked at it, giggling for a few minutes more. Then I put it back in the closet, ready to use next time I needed changies.

Then, all I needed to do was change my badge in the app, and hope there wouldn't be any hidden surprises with this one.