My name is Steven and I would like to tell a true story that happened to me on my very night as a freshman in college. This incident would become something I would never forget.

Being 18 years old, I really thought I had made it and had reached freedom at last. No longer would I be living in my parents home or under their rules. My new college roommate, Mike, was an acquaintance from my high school, so we chose to be roommates rather than accept potluck.

After getting settled in our dorm room we decided that since I was smaller, I would sleep on the top bunk and he on the lower. While putting my sheets on the 6" mattress I did pay particular attention to the fact that my new mattress was severely stained from previous bed wetting episodes. It was brought to our attention earlier in the day that our rooms were used each summer by boys’ aged 8 to 15 as part of a special camp program the college hosted. Obviously, my new mattress had experienced many boys who couldn’t control their bladders at night and had wet the bed like chronic bed wetters do. Seeing those mattress stains helped to rekindle the thoughts and memories from my own chronic bed wetting youth that had been such a dominant part of my life only a few years before.

The metal bunk beds were much the same as beds that could be found at almost any summer camp facility. They looked like youth style bunk beds and the springs squeaked a lot whenever you moved around on them. I finished putting the sheets on the bed and prepared for our first evening of college fun. My roommate and I caught up with some other people from another dorm and we all went out to some of the local college pubs to drink some beers and look for the action. Much beer drinking was done by all that night and we all got pretty loaded.

Mike and I arrived back at our dorm room around 1 A.M. and both passed out in our new beds. About three hours later, I was abruptly startled to find Mike screaming at me from the bunk below and kicking my mattress with his feet. When I finally came out of my slumber, I became acutely aware that I had just had a very complete and full blown BED WETTING Episode. My briefs, T-shirt, bed sheets, and mattress were completely soaked with the warm glow from my having peed the bed! I hadn’t had a bed wetting accident like this in over two years and at that moment I felt just like I was 12 years old again, waking up in yet another wet bed!

I must have been peeing my pants and bed for over a good minute before Mike realized it and woke up out of his own deep slumber. My heavy wetting had soaked right through the thin mattress and had completely drenched Mike's pajamas, sheets, and his mattress as well. It was a double bed wetting, something I had never done to someone else. If Mike had not been such a heavy sleeper, maybe he could have caught me in the early stages of this episode and minimized the damages, but this was not the case and the added humiliation of all of this was very real.

As he should have been, Mike was absolutely furious with me. At that moment I felt like a naughty boy Bed wetter, certainly not an older boy who was now in college. All I could do was to keep repeating over and over how sorry I was.

As he was disgustedly taking his wet clothes off and putting towels down over his wet sheets, so he could go back to sleep, he asked me flat out, "Do you do this often?" "No, I don’t" was all I could reply. Of course I now know I shouldn’t have lied and should have admitted to him the truth about my bed wetting past. I should have admitted that I had been a chronic bed wetter from ages 8 through 14 and was frequently made to wear diapers and plastic baby pants for it. At the very least I should have told him that I had always slept on plastic or rubber sheets and was certainly sorry I didn’t have one on my mattress that night.

On this particular night, while deep asleep, I may have been dreaming of wetting the bed when it was actually occurring. The restroom for our hall was also located down a long and damp corridor, so maybe subconsciously I decided it would be easiest to simply pee the bed like I had grown so accustomed to doing as a habit just a few years earlier. It also probably didn’t help that I was sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings. When I was a youngster, it was almost guaranteed that I would wet my bed anytime I slept in an unfamiliar place. At a minimum, with my past, I should have been on a rubber sheet.

After putting several towels down over the wet mattress and changing the sheets, Mike and I did manage to go back to sleep for the rest of the night. All I could do was to lay there for awhile on top of the towel which was by now becoming quite moist and think about what my roommate might do to expose or humiliate me for latest boyish bed wetting episode.

Would Mike expose my bed wetting problem to my peers in the dorm? What would they think of an 18-year-old boy still wetting his bed? Would I be ridiculed and forced back into diapers and rubber pants and made to wear them nightly as a result of this incident? The fear of these unanswered questions kept going through my mind as I slowly drifted off to sleep.

The morning arrived much to quickly and when I should have been preparing to go to orientation classes, I had to instead spend the morning cleaning up from my naughty bed wetting accident just as I had to do so many mornings when I was a boy. After Mike left for his class, I got out the blow dryer, opened a window and began the long process of drying both our mattresses out. When I was a boy, and wanted to try to avoid having my mattress displayed outside, I would use a blow dryer to dry my accident although no bed wetter can hide the stains that last forever.

To think, this whole nightmare could have been minimized considerably if I had only placed a plastic or rubber sheet on the mattress prior to my making the bed up the previous day. But how would I have explained the waterproof mattress protection to my roommate? Besides, they are so noisy to sleep on and they help make the announcement that a Bed wetter occupies the bed.

After blow drying the mattresses and putting them back on the bunk beds, I bundled up all the piss soaked sheets, briefs, t-shirts and towels and snuck off campus on a bus to a local Laundromat. I didn't want to use the facilities on campus, as I was very self-conscious about my wet sheets and someone else seeing me I might know. I felt my Bed wetters shame that morning and now I was going to get to experience some of the consequences of it. What a great way to start off my first day as a college freshman.

Looking back on it, Mike was really a good sport about my humiliating wetting episode and he surprisingly even let the whole issue pass without any outside discussions that I am aware of. Actually, if he had told anyone they probably would have laughed more at him than at me because he was the one who got peed on. I did my best to assure Mike that this was an isolated incident and one that would not happen again. I did feel bad about not being honest with Mike and admitting to him that I had been a chronic bed wetter throughout childhood and into adolescence.

With the passage of time, I now like thinking back on this incident and am actually glad that it was a bed wetting episode that would forever remain an important part of my total bed wetting history. The incident further helped to solidify in my own mind that I never really did outgrow bed wetting nor the label of “Bed wetter” that was so much a part of my life as a boy and early teen. After that incident and to avoid causing Mike any future discomfort, I decided to take responsibility and put a rubber sheet back on the mattress. The rubber was not nearly as noisy as a plastic one would have been, but I always knew I was sleeping on it. As time would pass, all of the bed wetting memories would resurface over the years to help remind me that “once a Bed wetter, always a Bed wetter!”

Today I am working on becoming a full time bed wetter again and letting the nighttime wetting habit reestablish itself. Every night I put on thick cloth diapers with waterproof rubber pants over top. I sleep on top plastic sheeted mattress protectors and am constantly reminded of my bed wetting status. I am wetting several times (usually somewhat awake) during the night.

It feels good to be able to finally accept and openly admit that I am a Bed wetter again. It definitely is a lot more work with all the extra laundry, diapers, rubber pants, and sheets, but bed wetting is a problem I know deep down I must give in to and allow to have control at night. I am hopeful that with the passage of time I will not wake at all during the night as I fill the diapers and rubber pants to their capacity. Now knowing and accepting that diapers and rubber pants will forever be a mandatory requirement each and every night as the “only” solution for the problem.