Chapter 35: A Thirty-Two Year Old Baby
“Are you sure you don’t want your lion?” Janet asked me just before she unbuckled me out of the carseat.

I inhaled. I didn’t even bother to look at the stuffie next to me. “No…ma’am.” A glint of hope flashed in her eyes followed by disappointment. She’d been hoping that I’d call her a different M-word. I still had some measure of pride in me. Best not to antagonize her, however. “Thank you,” I added.

“Okay…” she said, sounding a bit weary. I took a bit of cruel comfort in that moment. Janet could bathe me, diaper me, and dress me. She could have my hair cut, curled, and dyed. She could feed me poisoned food and leave me to stew in my own mess. She could spank me and reduce me to tears with a single swat. But I could cause her no end of frustration just by not calling her ‘Mommy’. It still didn’t even the odds, but every cat values their claws even when up against a bear.

I did my best not to grumble as AGAIN she slid two fingers in past the leakguards of my diaper. “Dry,” she said. As if I didn’t know. I felt a slight pang in my bladder. I still didn’t have to GO go, but I noticed the need if I thought about it.

I was a long way from the classic and stereotypical Little doing the potty dance bit. I was a teacher. We can hold our bladders for a long time. Or I used to be a teacher…

Damn it.

I just made myself sad…

Janet leaned into the back seat and grabbed the lion anyways. “Just in case,” she said. At roughly half my size, it still wouldn’t fit neatly into the diaper bag, so the toy found a home in Janet’s mammoth teacher purse. “Time to go see the doctor.”

My breath became shallow. My throat constricted. For the first time that day, I felt more than just humiliation and resentment and self pity. I felt fear. I hadn’t been to the doctor in years. In general, Littles don’t go to the doctor by choice.

Fun fact: According to MistuhGwiffin.web, there’s a severe shortage of Littles in every medical field save pediatricians. There’s not even that many of us in that branch, either. It’s just that it’s not unheard of. The majority of Little doctors are immigrants who got suckered in with propaganda and found out too late that doing anything short of working towards full citizenship might be misconstrued as immaturity.

But Pediatricians? Yeah. I’d been to one, back when I was the appropriate age to be seeing one.

A lifetime ago, I would have said it’s because seeing Littles surrounded by Little children caused enough cognitive dissonance to offset any given Amazon’s baby crazy. Cassie would have said it’s because they want us to live long enough so that they could catch us after we’d been alive long enough to be done growing. So no measles and mumps for us.

Maybe we were both right. I still don’t know.

Littles don’t typically go to hospitals. I didn’t go to hospitals. I’ve NEVER chosen to go to a hospital or a doctor. It’s not a long leap of logic for an Amazon to take care of a sick Little and then decide that they needed more help being cared for. That’s what happened to my uncle Thomas before I was born. He was afraid he’d been having a heart attack. They checked him into pediatrics… That’s what he got for experimenting with spicy food.

Nope. From about age ten to when some of us manage to move into semi-secure Little’s communities, we tend to avoid doctors. Either that, or the local Little “pediatrician” moonlights as a general practitioner and makes house calls.

All the other options are forced on us.

A cold whoosh of air hit me in the face as Janet opened the door to Premium Pediatrics. The banner above the door had pictures of cute, chubby, babies- actual babies- all giggling and wearing nothing but plain white diapers. Below the picture were the words “Now accepting children of ALL ages”. It didn’t take a genius to know what that meant.

The sign was in good condition, but the sun faded lettering hinted that this policy wasn’t anything remotely new. Assuming the babies pictured were Amazons or Tweeners, they very well might’ve been allowed to grow up by now.

Janet gave her name, signed in on a clipboard and then carted me into the waiting room. Apparently, she’d made this appointment last night and filled out the paperwork as I languished in the crib. Gentle pop music covers sung in auto-tuned children’s voices played softly on speakers in the ceiling.

She made a beeline towards a water cooler and dug out an empty bottle. I caught a glimpse of the lollipop I’d “earned” from the salon sticking out beside it and felt my tongue retreat to the back of my throat. There was another thing I wouldn’t be eating.

The water was just below the brim when Janet screwed the cap on. She put it aside, and filled up a paper cup; making sure to let out a satisfied “aaaaaah” after she’d downed it and thrown it away. Good. She didn’t have my trust and knew it. She hadn’t earned it. She didn’t deserve it.

A few steps later, she was sitting down and I was being cradled in her lap. I pursed my lips together and let the cold tasteless liquid dribble down my chin. “It’s just water, baby,” Janet said. “Drink up.”

I didn’t want to. I really didn’t. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I wanted to be difficult. I wanted to be a fussy, cranky Little that wouldn’t ever give her satisfaction and make her regret ever being friends with me and then betraying that friendship the first chance she got. And in a weird way I wanted to punish myself for ever being friends with her.

But I was thirsty. My throat was dry. I hadn’t had anything since the breakfast shake several hours ago. The cold calculating part of my brain, the Cassie part, told me to bide my time and look for an opening. Oh who am I kidding, that was the Clark part of my brain. The Cassie part of my brain wanted me to breastfeed just so I could draw blood and run away with a nipple still between my teeth.

I swallowed my pride, opened up and took the water. I avoided eye contact and instead took the rest of the waiting room.

That was a mistake.

I can’t remember ever wearing diapers as a child before. Like I’ve said, Littles tend to get potty trained early. But I do remember the handful of times I’d gone to the doctor as a child. This was the same atmosphere: Same cutesy stickers dotting the walls. Same boring posters promoting hand washing and checking temperature. Same pictures of doctors and smiling children posing together. Same table full of bead mazes and old coloring books and wooden alphabet puzzles with a few pieces missing.

That sameness was a problem for me.

I’d been in Beouf’s room so many times before that even waking up in her nap room I’d still felt like me. I was still thirty-two year old Clark Gibson. I had been Mr. Gibson for years and had my fill of chalk and school bells and educational toys. Those were still adult memories.

I’d never had my hair cut in anything resembling a salon, either. That was a completely alien experience to me.

But here? This was a type of place that I only ever associated with childhood. My last memories of a place like this happened before my voice had changed; when the world was even bigger and I still had so much growing to do.

Even then, I knew the world was always going to be too big for me, but it would get at least a tiny bit smaller over the coming years. Now I was back. I was back and everything was still so much bigger than me. I was drinking from a bottle, having my diaper checked (yet again), and waiting to be carried into a pediatrician’s examination room.

And so many of the “babies” in those pictures on the wall, looked like me.

It was worse than any hypnotic cartoon I could imagine.

I didn’t feel hypnotized. I just felt small.

Helpless.

Little.