On the way home in the van, Howard whined in babytalk from the back seat that he was hungry. Anita nodded patiently and pulled the Suburban into a McDonalds. Howard had hoped that she would order from the drive through window so he could skulk home with and hide his shame from the world. Instead, he was mortified when she carried him in the fast food restaurant wearing nothing but his diaper. She ordered a burger and a Happy Meal, paid and was given a number to claim their food. Then she carried him over to the dining area and found a group of high chairs lined up next to the wall. Anita moved one the chairs to an empty booth and strapped him into the chair before going back to retrieve their food. Howard looked over at the family seated in the booth next to theirs and saw that they had a little boy who appeared to be the about the same age as himself. Unfortunately for Howard, the resemblance ended there. The toddler in the next booth was fully dressed in a T-shirt and pants. The mother at the next table glanced at Howard’s diapers meaningfully and smiled condescendingly at his diapered condition. Howard blushed hotly when he realized that the woman thought that he was an older toddler who hadn’t matured enough to master potty training. Anita returned a minute later and sat down beside him in the booth with a tray of food. She opened the boxed Happy Meal and carefully unwrapped the small burger like an indulgent mother with a backward child. Anita opened her purse and took out a small package that she had retrieved from the grocery bags and stuffed in her purse before she unbuckled his seat belt and lifted him out of the van. She ripped the top of the plastic bag and pulled out an flat folded yellow-colored object decorated with charming little drawings of quacking ducks with orange bills and laid it on the table before stuffing the plastic bag back in her purse. Howard wondered what the object was, but wished she would get on with what she was doing before his hamburger got cold. He was hungry! Then Anita stood up and shook out the yellow object and stepped behind Howard’s chair. She bent over him from the rear and fastened the object around his neck. When Howard looked down and saw it, he realized for the first time what the thing was. She had put a disposable feeding bib on him! The bright yellow bib stood out in the room like a signpost announcing his inability to feed himself without making a mess. Even worse, the drawings of the little blue quacking ducks were so cute that they attracted the attention of anyone who could see them! Howard caught the amused glance of the mother in the booth next to them and wanted to slip down out of his high chair and hide his humiliation under the table. He would have too, if he hadn’t been strapped in place. Anita had made him look even younger by adding the feeding bib to his already infantine appearance. She sat down again and passed his burger to him, saying, “Eat your Happy Meal, Sweetheart, and Mommy will let you play with your new toy! Once we get home, Mommy will put you to bed so you can go nap-nap!” The mother in the booth next to them smiled at Howard as he clumsily took the burger from Anita’s hand and began to eat. Howard blushed in embarrassment at the woman’s attention and concentrated on eating his meal. The next thing he heard was a voice saying, “Hi Anita! What a surprise meeting you here! And who is this? I didn’t know you had a little boy! Are you babysitting for a friend?” Anita chuckled merrily and said, “Hi yourself, Susan! No, he’s not mine. I’m just taking care of him for a little while. He’s my sister’s little boy. She’s ill and I’m taking care of him until she can get on her feet again. I’m just getting some mommy practice in case I can adopt a baby of my own!” Howard looked up and saw the neighbor from across the street looking down at him. When she squinted at him, studying his features and asked incredulously, “Are you SURE he’s not your baby? He looks just like Howard!” Howard panicked. He could never explain how he came to be sitting in a high chair wearing nothing but a feeding bib and a diaper while eating a Happy Meal. He was caught! She knew who he was! Howard felt a warm sensation begin to flood his crotch. “Oh my God,” Howard thought when he realized what he had done and involuntarily opened his mouth to let a piece of spit-covered hamburger fall out of his mouth onto the protective bib. He felt the chunk of meat hit the bib and looked down with horror at the damning evidence of his incompetence displayed on his bib for the world to see and thought, “She knows who I am. Look at me! I’ve dribbled food all over my bib and peed in my diaper right in front of her! I’ll never live this down! We’ll have to sell the house and move to another town!” “It looks like you’ll get some practice sooner than you think! Have you looked at his dydee recently? It’s positively soaked!”, Susan said. “His diaper will keep until after we’ve eaten. There’s no rush,” Anita replied as she took a dainty bite from her burger. She saw that Howard had stopped eating and said to him in a motherly aside, “Eat your Happy Meal, Honeybunch. There’s a good baby!” Howard reluctantly began chewing on his hamburger again although the sinking feeling of terror he had felt a few minutes before had considerably reduced his appetite. He thought he might as well finish his meal, things couldn’t get much worse. “You’re probably right,” Susan admitted, “Babies are used to that sort of thing. Did I hear you right? Are you going to adopt a baby?” “I’ve given it serious consideration,” Anita said, “Of course I don’t want to adopt a toddler. A little one that age wonders where his mommy has gone and feels hurt that his mommy has abandoned him. Children like that often have adjustment problems in later life. I want to adopt a little baby who’s so young that he’ll think that I’m his real mommy.” “What does Howard think of adopting?,” Susan asked, “You’ve told me on several occasions that he’s utterly opposed to adoption.” Anita frowned and said, “Howard and I are separated. He left me the minute my sister’s little boy came into the house.” Susan smirked and said, “Afraid of the competition, huh? I’m not surprised! Most men are big babies at heart and don’t want to share their wives with an interloper. I swear, sometimes I think the lot of them ought to be put back in diapers and treated the way they deserve! Most women are more mommies to their husbands than wives anyway. I don’t know what it is about men that turns them into helpless infants the minute they get married! You’d think that they would’ve had enough mothering by the time they leave home. But no, the instant they get married, they try to turn their wives into mommies. Men like that need to be turned over their wives’ knees and given a good spanking!” “There’s that,” Anita agreed noncommittally, “I doubt that Howard would put up with the kind of treatment you suggest unless he was ill and couldn’t fight back. You know what a male chauvinist he is. But the point is moot now, he’s no longer a member of my household. He had a midlife crisis and started going “out with the boys” to nudie bars. One thing led to another and he changed from a faithful husband into a little boy who couldn’t control his urges. Howard is living with a woman who enjoys cleaning up the messes he makes and happily puts up with his infantile behavior. I can’t say I’m not pleased with how things have turned out. As for Howard, he made his decision when he started seeing other women and now he’s going to have to live with the consequences. As far as I’m concerned, I’m no longer married to him. He signed over his share of the community property to my name and went to live with the ‘other woman’. Good riddance to him! In the meantime, I’ve got this little one to take care of for my sister. I’m not lonely.” “Well, he’s a cutiepie, whoever’s child he is!”, Susan remarked, “Although if he were my child, I’d have him out of diapers and into training pants by now. He’s a little old for dydees, don’t you think?” “He’s a little slow. The doctor said…No, I shouldn’t say anything about my sister’s child. It’s not for me to go around telling everyone her business,” Anita lied glibly with a straight face. Susan’s mouth formed a large “Oh” of understanding and she asked, “I get the picture! I noticed that he still needs a feeding bib. Can he talk yet?” “Not very much,” Anita prevaricated, “But he’s a very sweet baby!” “‘Special’ children are always so loving,” Susan agreed, “My brother has a little one like him and he’s simply adorable! The doctors say that his condition is permanent and he’ll have to be cared for like an infant the rest of his life. Something to do with heavy metal poisoning or something. They said it was in the water they gave him from the water tap in the kitchen when he was a few months old. My brother and sister-in-law blame themselves for not keeping him strictly on canned formula until he was at least two. Everyone should know by now that giving tap water to infants is dangerous. It doesn’t matter if it’s boiled, tap water is simply too contaminated with pesticides, heavy metals and chemicals to give to infants. But my brother was in-between jobs and money was short, you know how it is. Anyway, they gave their little boy water in addition to his formula for four months starting when he was about two months old. That was all it took.” Howard was furious with Anita. She had as much told Susan that he was mentally retarded. Granted, it was better than having her find out that he was a full grown man who was suffering from a terribly humiliating condition, but not by much. And where did she get that stuff about nudie bars? Had she been spying on him? What was all that about “seeing” other women? Had she made it up or did she know about his “extracurricular” activities? Had she found out about Barbie somehow? When she said “Good Riddance” she sounded like she was serious. What the Hell was going on here, anyway? McDonald’s intercom called out an order number and Susan said, “That’s my number, I’ve got to go. It’s been nice talking to you. I’m sure everything will work out for you. I hope your sister is feeling better soon.” Susan patted Howard on the head patronizingly and said, “It’s been nice meeting you, Sweetie. I can’t get over how much you look like Howard.” She turned to Anita and said jokingly, “…You’re SURE that Howard didn’t make whoopie with your sister?” “My sister doesn’t have the slightest interest in Howard. Believe me, she’s not his type. It’s just a coincidence that her baby looks like him to you. Frankly, I don’t think he looks like Howard at all. He’s much cuter than Howard,” Anita replied dryly. “There’s no doubt about that,” Susan said with a knowing chuckle, “I know you didn’t marry Howard for his looks. His face looks like ten miles of bad back-country road. I’ve got to go before my food gets cold! Take care of yourself, bye!” Anita glanced at Howard’s diaper and saw that Susan had been right about it being soaked. The absorbent gel had expanded from the huge amount of urine it had soaked up, causing the crotch of his diaper to droop all the way down to the plastic seat of the high chair. There wasn’t a mother in McDonalds that wouldn’t have recognized that he was wet immediately. Anita could clearly see the dull yellow stain behind the obscuring translucent white plastic of the diaper’s outer shell. She considered changing him in the Ladies’ room, but she was afraid he’d put up a fuss. Besides, the diapers she’d bought for him were still in the car. Howard’s diaper change could wait until they got home. He needed to get used to wearing wet diapers anyway and there wasn’t any sense in making a special effort on his account. She was glad that she had put a disposable feeding bib on him. She hadn’t really intended to use them so soon when she bought them, but her intuition told her to bring the package of bibs in the restaurant with them. Howard had made a mess of himself. His hands were covered in catsup and drips of the red sauce had mixed with his saliva and were running down his chin to fall onto his bib. The feeding bib was covered with little particles of food and pink and red splatters of catsup-colored drool. When she examined the bib more closely she saw a big chuck of meat that the bib had caught before landing on the floor. Clearly, Howard was going to need a feeding bib at all of his meals from that moment on. Anita smiled at the mess he had made and patted him on the head encouragingly so he would finish his meal. Sound planning and good management had prevented a social disaster at the restaurant and probably prevented him from making a mess in the Suburban later if she had had to take his messy body out to the van in the condition it was in. Fortunately, she had provided for this contingency as well. She reached in her purse and pulled out the thin travel container of wet wipes. She was going to have to start carrying a diaper bag to hold all of his supplies soon. She promised herself that on their next trip out of the house, she was going to pack a diaper bag that she could carry wherever they went. They finished their meal quickly and Anita began to clean Howard up. He was surprised to see how big a mess he had made while eating. Anita wiped his lips with the dirty bib and removed it from his neck to scrape most of the mess from his hands with the clean side of the bib. Then she folded the bib neatly and laid it inside of the discarded Happy Meal box. Once she had wiped him clean with one of the wet wipes from the little box, she threw away the remnants of their meal and carried him back to the van. When they got home, Anita got out of the Suburban and went to the back seat to carry him into the house. When she bent over to unfasten his seat belt, the smell of a dirty diaper rose up from him and assaulted her nostrils. She shook her head with a maternal expression of forbearance and looked at him more closely. Howard had shrunk radically during the short ride home. It was obvious that the process of regression had resumed. Poor little Howard l ooked like he couldn’t have been more than two years old. The seat belt which she had snugged down to a tight fit over his tummy before the trip started lay uselessly across the crotch of his diaper and his diaper hung loosely about his waist, barely containing the both the mess that lay beneath his bottom and the pee he had voided at the restaurant. Anita unfastened the seat belt and carefully gathered him up in her arms to carry him into the house. She deposited him on the family room floor in his dirty diapers and said, “Honeybunch, Mommy has to go get the groceries out of the Suburban. Mommy wants you to stay right there while she’s gone. If you move and make a mess on Mommy’s clean rug, Mommy will spank! Do you understand?”
He nodded his understanding and she left him as he was on the floor while she went out to the van. Howard looked in wonder at the diaper which had been so tight earlier in the day. It was so loose that if had stood up, it would have immediately fallen off his tush. Howard played with his blocks until Anita finished putting up the groceries and came in the room. She looked at the pile of assorted toys that had been lying on the floor since Saturday and shook her head, saying, “I think your dirty dydees will keep for a little while. In the meantime, I think I should do something about this room. It’s a mess. It looks like I’m going to have to go through your toys, Howie. Most of your toys weren’t designed for babies. Oh well, I was tired of looking at the mess anyway. These toys have littered the floor for over a week!”