Some New Disaster

Chapter 8
Lesson VII: Baby Behavior

Chapter Description: Male hypnosis and humiliation

With only a handful of minutes remaining in the class, its script appeared to have come full-circle. Ninth and final F-student Robert sat in a solitary plastic chair at the head of the room-- just as Derek had done less than an hour before. The obvious similarities between the two teenagers’ predicaments did nothing to set the 17-year-old’s mind at ease.

“The responsible parent,” Miss Berdette explained, “will be attuned to his or her child’s needs, wants, and physical and mental states. There are a number of things healthy toddlers and infants can be expected to do that can’t necessarily be expected of babies in distress.”

Robert gulped down the lump in his throat and opened his mouth to protest.

But Miss Berdette was already a half-step ahead. “The challenge arises when a child’s vocabulary is so limited that he simply cannot communicate intelligently.”

“Ba bo gee!” said Robert confidently, definitively. His confidence washed away the moment he realized the only verbalizations he was capable of making were comprised solely of baby talk. He could think of the words. He could say them in his head.

Robert tried again. “Ah gaa gaa goo goo!”

“This would appear to be a happy baby,” indicated the teacher. The boy with the spiky brown hair was definitely far from happy, but at the utterance of the very word, a dumb, toddlerlike grin arced across his face. “Now, class, you would do well to note that it is extremely uncommon for a child of Robert’s age to be able to sit up in a chair designed for adults and their centers of balance.”

Some unidentifiable spark left Robert’s gaze, and the boy tumbled from the plastic chair and onto the tile floor of the classroom. He didn’t land especially softly. When the tears came, they came accompanied by a series of ragged sobs, then infantile wails... all performed in the unwilling, baritone voice of a 17-year-old young man.

“When healthy babies are vocally upset,” Miss Berdette said, “they will resort to common comfort activities. For example, they may pull themselves into the fetal position.”

Laying on his side, upon the floor, the despairing, raucous Robert took his arms and pulled his blue-jeaned knees up to his chest. Though this attenuated the cacophony he was producing, the boy continued to spill bitter tears onto the tile.

“And then they might suck their thumbs.”

Robert managed to maintain the fetal position with the assistance of one arm as he removed the other and twisted his freed fist into the perfect thumbsucking device. Then, his thumb was in his mouth, and he was nursing on it loudly, almost theatrically. Popping, slurping, moaning breathlessly around it as the act soothed his immediate troubles. The sensation of suckling on a firm, bony digit -- one that tasted salty and foreign, at that -- sickened the boy.

Horror was the watchword for Robert. He saw everything that was going on. Knew everything that he was doing. Was aware of the people for whom he was performing. But Miss Berdette had him under a spell. Robert could only watch from behind his bleary, tear-saturated eyes. Inside looking out.

His classmates looked on wordlessly.

“Now,” the teacher continued, “if your child is busy concentrating on as many as two motor-skill-based activities -- in this case, curling himself up and sucking his thumb -- it’s highly likely that he’s occupying too many mental resources to compute simple things... like asking to go to the potty if he’s in the middle of training.”

The teenager simply lay there, rocking on his side and nursing from his thumb, as he released his bladder into his pants. He didn’t even think about it. Robert had to pee, so he peed. He sniffled around the stiffness of his thumb as he soaked his boxer-briefs, the crotch of his jeans, and the floor beneath him. In 30 seconds he was freely and unapologetically rolling around in a puddle of his own urine.

The mysterious visitor in the back of the classroom continued to slash his pencil up and down his paper, faster and faster. Students were beginning to take notice. He made them uneasy.

“Sometimes thumbsucking just isn’t enough to trump a humiliation like pantswetting,” said Miss Berdette.

Humiliation? thought more than one student. What the hell is she talking about?

“Your child might want to suck on his feet.”

His blue jeans sloshing and splattering in the hot yellow puddle he had made for himself, Robert tore off his sneakers and socks and grabbed a hold of his left ankle. Only because he was a particularly limber swimmer was he able to get his toes to his face. Then, his mouth was around those, as well. Robert’s eyes rolled back into his head. This was a lot worse than thumbsucking, he concluded, only because it was so much better. The non-sequitur of the year.

He systematically threaded his tongue between his toes before returning to the ultimate comfort of sucking on the biggest of them.

In fact, though he remained agonizingly sober to all that was happening, he found he had essentially become deaf to any sound in the room other than Miss Berdette’s pronouncements-cum-commands.

“Toddlers pick their noses.”

Robert’s left index finger was up his nostril.

“Toddlers eat what they pull out.”

The entirety of the class groaned in disgust as Robert made a snack out of his boogers.

“Toddlers pick their butts and smell their fingers.”

When Robert did that, all he smelled on his fingertips was pee. No surprise there.

“Toddlers,” Miss Berdette announced, feeling charitable, “have rudimentary language skills... but no verbal inhibitions.”

Robert found that he had regained his ability to communicate in the English language... mostly. “I like my toes!” he squealed. “It feels good to suck on them!”

“And how about your wet pants, little one?” cooed Miss Berdette. “How do they feel?”

“Kinda icky!” shrieked the 17-year-old. “But warm!”

“And sucking your thumb?”

“Good ‘nuff,” Robert said, in a voice several octaves higher than the one to which his confidantes were familiar. “But could I get back to my toes now?”

And, when Robert shoved what he could of his foot into his drooling mouth, the bell rang.