My Funny Farm - Chapter 14 – One More Time, With Feeling

 

My Funny Farm

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 14 – One More Time, With Feeling

 

Waking up in a baby crib, with bars on either side of you is not anything like waking up in a regular bed.  The minute you open your eyes, you know you’re trapped there and there’s no way out.  With my old bed I could get out of it any time I wanted.  Not anymore.

For once I was awake before one of the girls could come and get me.  Not that I wanted to be awake, but I think just sleeping in the strange bed…I mean crib…was so different that sleeping was more difficult for me than ever.  Consequently, I really wanted to go back to sleep.  I closed my eyes, and tried, but that darn fate had other ideas.

The light suddenly switched on.  “Hi baabyyy,” Emily sang cheerily.  “How was your new crib?”

“Disturbing,” I tried to say around that huge plug in my mouth.  I’m not sure if she understood me or not, but she didn’t seem to react to my assessment of the situation.  Since the word didn’t come out even close to clearly, I was guessing she wasn’t really worried about what I had said…or what I thought.

It took her a moment of struggle with the unfamiliar mechanism to lower the entire side of my crib.  Those bars suddenly gone were like a huge relief.  After an entire week of the same schedule, I pretty much knew she wasn’t going to allow me out of bed…I mean out of my crib yet.

She ignored my blankets, also ignoring the bloated mess of diapers I was wearing.  Instead, she stuck her face close to mine and pulled the plug from my mouth.  “What are you?” she asked in a soft but demanding voice.

Oh, how I suddenly hated her again.  Oh, how I wanted to lash out with my fist.  But I didn’t.  The damn police might come and put me back in that other funny farm place again – with the high school age doctors!  “I’m nothing but a baby,” I told her, remembering the way they had forced me to say it countless times.

“Right!” she said determinedly.  “And since you’re nothing but a baby, then how should you behave?”

Huh?  Now what?  “How should I behave?”

“Since you’re nothing but a baby, then how should you behave?” she asked again.

“I don’t know.  Like a jerk?”

“Wrong answer!” she said angrily.  “If you’re nothing but a baby, then how should you behave?”

Okay, I was getting the picture.  “Like a baby?” I guessed.

“Right!  Now tell me from the beginning.  I want you to tell me that since you’re a baby, then you should behave like a baby.”

“I’m a baby, so I should behave like a baby?” I asked.

“Right!” she replied.  “Again.  Just like that.”

Oh-oh.  I had a bad feeling about what was coming.  “I’m a baby, so I should behave like a baby,” I replied.

“Good!” she said.  “When Caitlin brings your bottle in a few minutes, you don’t get it until I hear you keep saying that for a while, and I expect you to say it like you mean it.  Like it’s something important.  Got it?  No bottle until I’m satisfied.  Now tell me and keep telling me, what are you and how should you behave?”

Did she really think that that bottle of baby formula was going to be some kind of reward?  It was just the opposite!  But the determined look on her face let me know I wasn’t going to get out of this.  “I’m a baby, so I should behave like a baby,” I replied.  “I’m a baby, so I should behave like a baby.  I’m a baby, so I should behave like a baby.”

“Say it like you mean it!” she prompted.

I put a bit more effort into it.  “I’m a baby, so I should behave like a baby.”  Over and over.

Catilin walked in and watched us for a while, handing the bottle off to Emily.  “I’ll get ready for work,” she whispered to Emily before she walked out.

“I’m a baby, so I should behave like a baby.”  I hated saying it once.   I hated saying it over and over even more.  I hated having to sound like I meant it.  And I especially hated that they were starting to make me feel like nothing but a baby in more ways than one.  What had Nichole said about having me declared incompetent?  I worried that I was well on my way.

After breakfast, as usual, Emily cleaned me up and changed my diaper.  Then to add to my humiliation, she pulled a short skirt and a frilly blouse out of my closet.  I stared at both those garments with nothing but disbelief.  But a few minutes later, I was put down on the floor wearing them, along with a pair of white socks on my feet.  No shoes.  That’s how she dragged me out to the living room for my usual lousy TV time.

Emily hit me a number of times during the day with having to repeat my new phrase over and over.  Could that be what I had read somewhere that they called an affirmation?  I wasn’t sure, but I was guessing that’s what it was supposed to be.  I just wish she hadn’t made me sound like I meant it every time.

Despite being saddled with an entirely new environment to live in, and despite Emily making me say that new affirmation a million times, much of my mind was stuck worrying about something completely different.  For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Nichole had told me the day before.  They wanted to get me to the point where they could have me declared incompetent.  And once they did, then they would have some…opportunities.  Whatever that meant.

But being declared incompetent had more of a bad connotation to me than spending the rest of my life in that professional nuthouse downtown.  And something told  me it would be for the rest of my life, which they would make damn sure I kept living.  Or maybe they would let me die.  Maybe they would even help me die.  Wouldn’t that gain them whatever it was they were after even sooner?  I had to think about that.  But as much as I wanted to die, I was more worried about being declared incompetent.  That part I knew I didn’t want.  What opportunities?  That puzzled me like nothing else.

Later in the afternoon, Ashley walked in while I was…playing…in my new fenced in play area.  I remembered it was Sunday.  Her day to “talk” to me.  But last week, nothing we had talked about had been about me wanting to kill myself.  We had talked instead about my favorite thing in the world, my wife, Ashley’s mother.  We both had very fond memories of her.  I wondered what she would want to talk about today.

While Ashley spent a few minutes talking with Emily on the other side of the room where I couldn’t hear them, I sat there and once again remembered that one big thing I had been so worried about all day.  Incompetency!  Should I tell Ashley what Nichole had told me the day before?  Should I tell her how worried I was about it?  Would she care?  Yeah, I was sure she would care, but then I thought about something else.  Maybe she wasn’t the best person to tell.  Maybe the best person was James, my son.  He was the one who was handling all my business affairs, and the concept of opportunities sounded to me like it fell under that category.

And then there was the possibility that all my worrying about it was for nothing.  Maybe I was misreading the entire situation.  That was entirely possible.  I didn’t know all their plans.  I only knew the few brief snatches of things that I overheard now and then.  Strangely, I was the baby of the family now, and nobody consulted me about anything.  So yeah, maybe I really was misreading and misunderstanding the entire thing.  I suddenly felt a bit better.

The two girls finished their conversation and Emily left, closing the bedroom door behind her.  Ashley came over and opened the gate in my pen.  “Hi baby,” she said.  “How’s your new room?”  She looked around and shook her head.  “I can’t believe how nice it came out.  I think it’s just perfect!”

Did she really want to know my opinion about it?  The truth was, just looking around my room frightened me to death…while at the same time, it excited me to death.  I was stuck in a dream world that played to all my weirdest fantasies.  The problem with being frightened to death and excited to death, was that neither of those prospects would actually kill me.  Pity.

Ashly reached her hand down toward me.  “Come on,” she said.  “Let’s sit together on the couch.”

Oh goody!  I was going to be allowed to actually sit on my own couch.  Or maybe it wasn’t my couch.  But it was in my room!

She slipped her shoes off and sat up on one side, pulling her feet up onto the couch to face me.  I sat on the other side and pulled the plug from my mouth.

“Put your feet up and face me,” she said.  “That way we can at least see each other.”

So I did like she did and turned to face her with my feet on the couch.  Now I just had to wait to see what subject she wanted to talk about this week.  I didn’t have to wait very long.

She smiled at me and said, “Em and I got to do some shopping yesterday, and it was great!”

“Great?” I asked.  “I’m guessing it’s always great for both of you.”

She chuckled.  “Yeah.  Pretty much.  It was nice to go yesterday though since we had such a big shopping list to take care of.”  She pointed playfully at me.  “And all of it for you!  How do you like that skirt outfit you’re wearing today?”

That threw me for a second.  “It’s…okay,” I told her.  There was no way I was ever going to admit how much it turned me on.

She laughed,  “I’m betting it’s a bit better than okay,” she replied.

I said nothing to that, which only made her laugh again.

“Anyway,” she said, “Em and I really loved that shopping trip.  But what struck me while we were out, was how much it was the same as all the shopping I did with Mom, except that now I’m the parent instead.  And I think what really made me think about that was trying to find baby clothes for someone your size.”  She dropped her voice to a whisper.  “They don’t exist!  We had to do the best we could.”

“I have no doubt,” I told her.  “And, I have no doubt you and Emily had a great time…again.”

“Yeah, we did,” she admitted.  “We’ve already talked about how much I always loved shopping with Mom, but the trips that I think were really the best were when Em, me, and Mom could all go together.  They were the best times imaginable.”

“I’m sure they were,” I replied.  “And the three of you spent enough to support an entire country.  I happen to know that for a fact!”

Ashley laughed again.  “Yeah, we probably did.”  She became more serious.  “Emmy and I spent a lot of money this weekend too.  So much that I called James and suggested that maybe I should pay more than just my third of it all.  In fact, I offered to pay for most of it.  But James said no.  We would stick to our agreement, and it was all stuff we would have been buying for you anyway, so he was good with it.”

“Stuff for me?  Like what?”

“Some of it you already know of course, in fact you’re wearing some of it and remember you’ve got a few new toys to play with now and some real pretty bedding for your crib.  But there’s other stuff that I guess you’ll find out about in time.”  She laughed.  “I also know there’s a few things that came in the mail for you this week that Emmy and Caitlin are dying to try out with you.  I think they’re planning it for later this week.”

“What’s that?” I asked, afraid to find out.

She shrugged.  “I’ll let it be a surprise.  I know it should be interesting.”

“What?”

She shrugged again.  “Wait and see.  Did you enjoy sleeping last night in the pajamas Emily found for you?”

“Pajamas?  Is that what you call it?  I thought it was a nightgown.  A long one.”

She seemed surprised.  “They put the nightgown on you?  I’m so glad.  I insisted on buying you that, but Emmy was sold on a pair of pajamas for you instead, especially since the weather is turning cooler.”

“I guess I have that to look…forward to yet.”

“Yeah, you do,” she told me.  “I remember one time when me, and Em, and Mom were out, and…”

We talked for almost half an hour together about shopping once again.  Actually though, she did most of the talking, spending a lot of time comparing shopping trips between her and her mother, and her and Emily, since she was the mother now.  Once, she even briefly mentioned looking forward to Emily having a baby and their shopping trips could become a threesome again.  My daughter certainly loved her shopping.  I guess, so did Emily.  Just like Rachel had.  That gene certainly got passed down the line from mother to daughter…to daughter.

That nice talk with Ashley wasn’t the only time I got to be on that couch that day.  After my bath and being changed into another of the big fat diapers, along with that same long nightgown again, Emily brought my evening baby bottle of formula into the room and sat on one end of the couch.  I had already been through it last night so I knew what was happening.  I laid down on the couch and arranged myself so that my head was in her lap.  She stuck the bottle in my mouth, and I did my best to make sure I was sucking properly, keeping the required rhythm I knew she was expecting.  And trust me, here eyes never left my face.

“You know,” Emily said as she held my bottle to my lips.  “I really like sitting here holding you like this.  I know you’re a lot bigger than a real baby…that I’d love to have someday, but even as big as you are, I still love holding you and doing this with you.  It’s real nice.”

I would have commented, but she was keeping that bottle in my mouth, and I was also too preoccupied with keeping my required sucking rhythm going.

“I’m sure Caitlin likes it too,” Emily continued.  “Not to mention, it’s good practice for her.  She’s really getting into taking care of you and I think she’s enjoying it more than ever.  Which is good.  She needs to learn these things.  But for me, sitting here quietly, feeding you like a real baby is…nice.  It’s relaxing.  It’s…special.  And baby,”  Once again she bopped me on the nose.  “I love you so much!”