Tommy reluctantly allowed her to put a spoonful in his mouth. Mary studied each expression on his face as she ladled in more spoonfuls. After three spoonfuls he grimaced at the taste of the squash and turned his head away in utter disgust. He couldn’t eat another mouthful of that crap or he’d toss his cookies then and there. “You’re not Bobby!’” she yelled, “Bobby loves squash! Tom always hated squash. You’re Tommy!”
“She knows who I am!”, he thought in panic. He began making hand motions to try and tell her what had happened. She looked shocked as she realized that he was trying to communicate with her.
“You can still think, can’t you?”, she asked.
He nodded his head vigorously.
“Do you know what’s going on?” he nodded again.
“Hold up two fingers on each hand so I’ll know this isn’t a coincidence.” Tommy gave her a Nixonian greeting which had previously become popularized during WWII as Winston Churchill’s famous single-handed victory gesture.
“Do you know who I am?”, she asked.
He nodded assent.
“Was there a mix-up at the Daycare Center?”, she queried.
He nodded again.
She laughed and said, “Do you mean that Marge has Bobby?”
He nodded again.
“Well, I’ll call her so we can exchange babies. Does your Mommy know you can still think?”, she asked in a slightly bemused tone.
He shook his head “No.”
He moaned and started to cry. She stood in shock for a moment and then a quizzical expression came over her features. She took the bowl from the tray and removed the tray from the high chair. She looked down at him while he sobbed. She hesitated, then put three of her fingers down into the front of his diaper. “Did you wet your diaper?”, she demanded.
Tommy nodded and continued to sob. Her expression softened and she said, “I’m not going to call your Mother, at least not for the moment. Now, calm down while I get you a dry diaper. I’ll be right back.”
His crying had quieted to sniffles when she returned and kept looking down at his diaper and weeping. “Are you finished? Is that all? “, she asked.
“Yes,” he nodded.
He frowned looking down with an expression of intense concentration on his face. He looked up at her, then his expression changed to surprise and he started to cry again. “Well, ……What’s wrong now?”, she demanded.
His face blushed crimson in embarrassment. The smell of a dirty diaper assailed her nostrils. She smiled broadly and said with venomous condescension, “Did little Tommy make a poopy in his dydee?”
He nodded miserably.
“Well, well, well. What would you do to get a clean diaper? Would you suck your thumb?”, Mary demanded of her ex-husband.
He nodded vigorously.
“Sooo…You LIKE sucking your thumb!”, she exclaimed with an air of astonishment and disgust, “I didn’t really believe Marge when she told me you had sucked your toes the first day we went shopping. But now I know! That explains why it took you four years to quit smoking! You’re no better than some of the little boys I had when I was teaching Kindergarten and First Grade. If you had been one of my students, I’d have marked your personality in your student file as horribly immature! It’s obvious that you’ve never matured beyond the oral stage of personality development. I’m sorry that I misjudged Marge! I had thought that she was exaggerating for effect! Now I know she was telling the truth! You don’t only suck your thumb, you like to suck your toes too! I wish I had known how infantile you were before I married you! Since you didn’t object to sucking on a baby bottle the other day while we were shopping I guess you enjoy nursing a bottle too! You must have been ecstatic when I fed you yesterday!”
