I’d like to preface this story with this fact: before April 26th, 2012, I don’t recall ever having to change a diaper in any of my babysitting assignments, as they were always already in their night-time diapers when I’d arrive to sit after dinner.
Okay! Moms, prepare to laugh your heads off at my expense. New dads, please fess up if you had a similar ah-ha! moment with today’s diapers.
Sometime after we’d made our way through most of the first box of diapers, I’d get to the second tab and pull it apart, only to realize that it didn’t have any adhesive. At best, it looked like the adhesive was stronger than the tab’s attachment to the diaper, since it looked weird with some quality control number stamped on it. I assumed that either the adhesive roll was running out when these diapers were made (like when register receipts start printing with that pink striping) or were just plain made wrong.
I’d grab a second diaper and it would work!
This went on for several days, not always every changing or every day, either.
Finally, after one night’s bath, I experienced this again. First tab: fine. Second tab: no sticky. Now, I know the ladies are laughing so hard right now, if they weren’t already. Please don’t spoil this for the men – oh, this is in writing on the Internet. Right.
I grabbed 2 more diapers and tossed those out, too. Same problem.
Boy (stark naked, ever-increasingly chilly Boy) and I went to his room to fetch a handful. I shouted down the stairs to Beautiful, “These diapers are freaking getting on my last nerves! We need our money back!” and proceeded to try on one diaper after another.
Finally, once one got both tabs on the front of the diaper properly, the light bulb went on over my head.
I slowly pulled it back off and felt it. No sticky. I’m sorry I speak like a toddler now, by the way. Back on. Back off. “By golly, I think these are Velcro,” I said to myself, or possibly to Boy. I’d been putting on the first tab so quickly and effortlessly that I never realized they weren’t sticky. It wasn’t until I got to the second one and did some adjustments or slowed down for a good alignment that I took notice and freaked out at bad manufacturing.
I pulled a half-dozen perfectly good diapers back out of the trashcan and headed downstairs like I had won the Nobel prize for in-genius diaper reverse engineering.
“Yeah, didn’t you notice the strip on the front that they attach to?” quipped Beautiful when I relayed my marvelous discovery.
“Of course, on the first day, but I thought that was some super-strong area that wouldn’t be pulled away from the diaper when the sticky tabs pull on them with movement.”
I have since yet had a reason to throw out a diaper that didn’t have a sticky second tab.
Every now and then, I get more and more frenetic and am constantly doing things but not really getting anything of substance (read: money, quality time, healthy stuff) done. I become a shell of a man, a shadow of my 
