Updated Policy

He joined the back of the queue – barely inside the doors of the school, and no more than a hundred metres from where his parents had waved him off from the gates. This wasn't normal at all – normally everybody was sent to their classrooms right away, but today an authoritative young teaching assistant took his name, ticked it off somewhere deep inside a stack of papers on her clipboard, and directed him to stand on the right hand side of the corridor.

He took his backpack off and held onto it, shuffling along the line as it moved, following along behind the chubby young panda in front. Across the hallway, there was a line of girls, waiting just like the rest of them – quietly gossiping with one another, hushing their voices whenever a teacher strode past. Every minute or so, sometimes less, each line took a step forward. There were quite a few students in the school – all juniors, of course - but this school was restricted to mammals for practical reasons. A bespectacled weasel had arrived and tagged on behind him, though he didn't talk.

At long last, and after having snaked around a number of corners, even splitting from the girls' line at a tee in the hallway, he was at the head of the queue – a plain, dark-grey door with a carefully applied multicoloured strip running around it's edges, just beside the frame, for the benefit of all species with lacking colour vision. In the centre of the door, set at eye level for the kids who would be after it, was a bathroom sign with a male symbol on it.

Of course, our boy was pretty well stumped. Nobody, not even his parents, had told him what was supposed to be happening. It could well be a simple inspection or check-up with the nurse... It could be time for shots, even! Pretty quickly he started to panic. He was shy, and the nurses tended to be more than a little frightening. And so, when the door opened and, conspicuously, the room was empty, with no sign of the panda cub who went in before him, he backed away a few paces from the yawning chasm of the door, turned, and bolted down the corridor. He started back along the line, towards the main doors, struggling his backpack on over his shoulder.

Behind him, from the open door, a tall, wide kangaroo leant out, and shouted the name of the teacher who was pacing the corridor supervising, who turned, and with feline reflexes, fielded the young lad as he tried to duck past – catching him by the scruff of the neck, or maybe it was the neck of his uniform sweater, and pulling him up to waist height, smartly sitting him on his hip and placing a sinuous, lithe arm around him, putting a rapid end to his hopes of escape.

Our hero struggled against the tiger, who tutted and shook his head, addressing him directly.

“Where do you think you're going, kiddo? Nothing to be afraid of here.”

The kid's mouth pulled into a frown, but nonetheless his brow softened, though it quickly tightened into a confused scowl yet again as the felt a tug at his school shorts – then at his underwear. Being pressed against the tiger's shirt, there's no hope of turning his head to see what was going on, but he could feel the hem of his underwear getting turned out, and then examined by the label. The teacher tutted again, fixing his clothes back to how they were and lowing the small, fussy kid back onto the ground, keeping a firm grasp on one paw and leading him back to the bathroom. The ferret kid from behind him in the line was gone now, the line having advanced in his absence, and now the hallway was all but empty, save for a few stragglers from the back of the line who had caught up.

The door swung open again, and the teacher passed the paw he held over to the kangaroo who appeared from the dim room. The teaching assistant wore a white apron and blue plastic gloves over her paws, and she grasped the boy by his wrist, said something about a “little Houdini” to the teacher, who laughed and stepped off as he was lead into the room, and heard the door swing shut behind him, cutting out the light of the corridor.
“Okay, little one, let's have a look at you”. His eyes were adjusting to the gloomy room, but he could see the tiles on the floor, the sinks along the nearside wall... A sniff and a squint across the room put him somewhat to rest. The room smelt like a perfume shop and an umbrella store. Plastics and strong-smelling scents combined. Coming into focus were a row of baby changing tables on the offside, and in the back wall, a second doorway. His fears and concerns vanished – this was just a room for taking care of the infants, he told himself. He'd been in them hundreds of times since he started school!

 In fact, he didn't even need to be here. He'd been potty trained for months, before last summer, even! Nonetheless, the kangaroo took both his paws and held them up over his head gently, before nodding to another nurse – who upon closer inspection was a mouse or some such rodent – whose job was apparently to remove pants. First the button securing his shorts over his tail was popped, and then two grey paws reached around his sides, said “good boy” rather too close to his ear, and undid the front buttons, allowing the stretchy school uniform to drop to his ankles, which elicited much tutting from the assembled nurses.

“Honestly, another one. It's as though nobody got the message.”

“Hmm. Well, never mind. We were prepared for more, really. Shocking, though. No protection at all!”

The grip on his wrists tightened perceptible as, behind him there was a rustle and a quiet jingle, before he felt cold steel against the base of his tail, and recoiled away from it, pushing his hips forward. The kangaroo used a gloved hand applied to his belly to push it back softly.

“Ah, don't be fussy now. Behave yourself and you'll get a treat. We need to sort you out, sweetie.”

Placated by the ambiguous offer of “treats”, and with some reluctance, he doesn't move an inch as he feels the stainless steel of a pair of large fabric scissors against his back, slipping down towards his tail, and then rapidly closing up. Snip!

A few strands of fur fall to the porcelain floor and the waistband of his pants comes loose, apparently losing all elasticity. Not long afterwards, he looks down to his right to see the scissors closing in, and it all dawns on him – they're ruining his underwear! His fidgets and whines are met only with a quiet shushing noise as... Snip, Snip... the side panels of his somewhat prized underwear gives way – he got them for potty training, after all – succumb.

With a quiet sniffle, and with a few tears welling up in his eyes, the deed is done. The side of his briefs are cut away, and a paw reaches around, grasps firmly at the slack in the front of his printed, colourful pants and tugs, pulling them out from between his thighs  steadily, and laying it out on the floor, flat and ruined.

A teardrop rolls down and off his face, the motherly kangaroo produces a tissue and, still with his arms raised above his head, swabs away his tears.

“Aww, little one. Don't cry now. You'll be okay. Now you'll fit in with all your classmates, too. Don't you want that?”

With a quiet nod, the boy lifts up his face and pouts at the nurse, feeling his paw lifted up and guided back down, his canvas shoes snagging momentarily on the garment that is tugged off – his shorts. The same happens on the other side, and then without a word, the teaching assistant unfolds his new underwear – thick training pants. Disposable training pants for cubs who have accidents. Disposable training pants for cubs who can't be trusted to make it to the bathroom from a classroom.

In no time, the 'diaper' is stretched out in front of him. With a little prompting, he steps forwards and allows his fresh, plastic, thirsty pants to be threaded, cuff over tail, onto him, and then tugged firmly home, the high-rise, leak-proof waistband is snug on his skinny little belly, the neutral purple and blue cover has popular cartoon characters on it, and nothing about it suggests that it's inappropriate underwear for a little kid to wear for school.

His paws are released, his shorts are slipped back on and buttoned up, and his bottom gets a gentle pat. The nurse seems proud. The whole process took less than a minute and would send a clear message about the rules to the boy's parents. His old, useless underpants are bundled up and dropped, unceremoniously, into the diaper pail with the rest of the day's takings. From a kid weasel's unchanged night-diaper to the inadequate cloth trainers confiscated from an unsuspecting raccoon, the school's new uniform policy had been implemented cleanly and without tears.

The largest cost to the school? Distributing lollipops to those few boys & girls who had objected and cried. Other than that, the diaper company would foot the bill, and reap what they sowed when parents started doing the buying.

~