Father's Second Childhood

Chapter 1
Father's Second Childhood

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Chapter Description: Four stern fathers...

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"This is ridiculous! I can’t believe they actually spanked us! Just for giving some food and some extra clothes to those hoboes!" Walt sat down gingerly on his bed.

"Yeah. You’d think my dad would want to help the poor, him being deacon of the church. But no." George slipped into a sing-song imitation of his father’s voice. " ’Don’t encourage those shiftless vagrants!’ And on top of that, we got all these chores!" He limped over to lean against a desk. "Look, I’ll help out painting your garage if you help me move those dumb Cupid statues in my mom’s garden. Those things weigh a ton!"

Jerry sniffled. "It’s tougher for me! My dad’s the town sheriff!" He wiped his nose on his sweater sleeve. "He said if I didn’t have the lawn around the dog kennels weeded by nightfall, he’d throw me in jail!"

"And I gotta clean out the barn! Those big..." Alvin plunged his hands into the pockets of his knickerbockers. "It’s humiliating! We’re fifteen, for crying out loud! They still treat us like a bunch of kids!"

"SSSSHHH!" George motioned. "Keep your voice down!"

"Yeah!" Jerry added. "You don’t want ’em overhearing us and paddling us again, do you?"

"Aw, don’t worry about it!" Walt rose painfully. "They’re all down in my dad’s lab!"

"He still playing mad scientist?" Alvin hooted. "The next Edison!"

They all laughed. Walt Horst’s father was the school principal, but he had pretensions toward being a great scientist. He was constantly tinkering and mixing noxious chemicals in the grubby little lab he’d set up in a spare room.

"I overheard him say he’s got something really special to show ’em this time," Walt responded. "A fountain of youth potion or somethin’."

"Boy!" George pounded his hand with his fist. "Wouldn’t that be something!"

"Sure would. But it’ll probably turn out to be a bust like all his other experiments." Walt brightened suddenly. "Let’s go watch!"

"I thought you weren’t allowed in your dad’s lab!"

"Heck, I got a peephole!" Walt laughed. "It’s in the coat closet! We can see everything from there! Come on!"

The four boys hurried downstairs, moving a bit painfully due to their sore rumps.

#

"This new potion of mine will be a sensation!" Professor Horst exclaimed, stroking his leonine beard. "Never again will man have to fear the passage of time, the loss of vitality! Now he can be immortal!"

"Sure, sure, Paulie," Sheriff Blake nodded, scratching his stomach. "Now cut the balloon-juice and show us!"

"Bill’s right," Deacon Tumey nodded, adjusting his watch-chain. "All the time you talk big, you get us to give you money for your ’experiments,’ then you have nothing to show! This time, prove it!"

"I’ll do better than that, Conrad!" Professor Horst produced four champaigne glasses from behind a counter. "I’ll share it with you!"

Suffused with pride, he produced a greenish-black liquid from a nearby bunsen burner and filled each glass.

Judge Henderson peered through his spectacles. "Are you sure it’s safe? You’d better not poison us!" Professor Horst handed him a glass. "If you poison us, I’ll sue!"

"Ah, relax, Milton!" Sheriff Blake grinned, taking a glass himself. "If it’s like all his other experiments, it’ll just make us nauseous!"

"This is different!" Professor Horst insisted. "I’ve tested and tested! Why, it’s worked perfectly on five alley cats so far!"

Deacon Tumey took a glass and sniffed it suspiciously. "Well, that’s good enough for me, I suppose."

Professor Horst raised the final glass to his lips. "All together, now! To immortality!"

He drained the concoction in one gulp. After a moment’s hesitation, the others followed suit. They looked at one another, sour-faced, then exploded into coughing fits.

"Wow!" Sheriff Blake exclaimed. "What was IN that stuff? Had a kick like a Missouri mule!"

"I’d better not be poisoned!" Judge Henderson insisted.

"Relax, gentlemen! Youth and vitality are only seconds away!"

"I’ve heard that before!" Deacon Tumey sneered. "Well, if you’re finished, I’ll be..." He shivered, staggered, and fell back in his chair. "I feel... odd..."

"Yeah," Sheriff Blake pulled a hankerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. "Me too..."

"You’ve poisoned us!" Judge Henderson whipped off his spectacles. "I knew it! He’s poisoned us all!"

"Relax, gentlemen!" Professor Horst staggered to a nearby chair. "It’s only the potion starting to take effect! But soon... youth... and vitality... will... be..."

The room fell deathly silent. An eye peering through a tiny hole on the wall opposite the men widened.

"Hey, what’s going on? I wanna see!"

Shushing, Walt surrendered the peephole to Alvin. Stunned, Alvin watched his father, Judge Henderson, fall backward in his chair, shaking like he had the palsy. Before the boy’s eyes, Judge Henderson’s totally bald head suddenly blossomed with a fuzz of bright red hair. As if to compensate, his mustache retreated up his nostils until it vanished completely. His wrinkles faded, his skin became smoother, his features softer. His body shrank, falling into itself like a collapsing tent. Suddenly, there was a jug-eared, freckle-faced ten year old boy dressed in his father’s now oversized suit sitting in the chair before him. Just as Alvin almost convinced himself he was hallucinating, his father’s shoes slipped off the boy’s small feet and thudded on the wood floor.

"OH MY..."

George clamped his hand over Alvin’s mouth, then over his own as he took his turn at the peephole. Soon, all four boys were climbing over each other trying to get a look.

Sheriff Blake was now a round-faced urchin with a shock of sandy brown hair, his watery-blue eyes looking wildly around him. He stared in shock at Deacon Tumey, now an apple-cheeked, snub-nosed youth. The small, angelic-looking blond boy almost enveloped in Professor Horst’s three-piece suit waved his arms triumphantly.

"IT WORKED!"

Deacon Tumey looked at Professor Horst, at the others, then at himself, his mouth working furiously. "What have you DONE to us?" he finally gasped out in a piercing falsetto shriek. "What have you done to us? You..."

"I’m going to sue!" Judge Henderson struggled to his feet, clutching his oversized trousers to his chest. "I’m going to sue you for this! You can’t do this to me!"

"Oh my God!" Sheriff Blake exclaimed, examining his face in a nearby mirror. "He’s turned us into kids!"

"Relax, friends! Relax!" Professor Horst held up his arms. He let his own trousers fall to the floor and stepped out of them, striding around the room in only his now too-long shirt and

shorts. "Everyone stay calm!"

"STAY CALM?" Sheriff Blake shouted. "How can you expect us to stay calm when you’ve done this to us? My Lord, I’ll be a laughing stock!"

"Oh dear, that’s right!" Deacon Tumey sucked his finger. "Our families, our friends... We’re pillars of the community! How can we go on like this?"

Professor Horst placed a reassuring hand on the Deacon’s shoulder. "Don’t worry, Conrad. It’s quite all right. The effect of the drug is only temporary. After all, how could I make a profit from an immortality drug you only need to take once?"

"Oh, thank God..." All three men, and all four boys in the next room, nearly fainted with relief.

"We should return to our... ahem... ’old’ selves by tomorrow morning at the latest."

"TOMORROW?" Sheriff Blake exploded. "YOU MEAN WE’RE STUCK LIKE THIS UNTIL TOMORROW?"

In the next room, the boys smothered giggles as they watched their now pint-sized fathers fume and worry.

"What are we supposed to do until them?" Judge Henderson demanded. His glasses slipped off his nose. He pushed them back and they fell off his ears. He pulled them forward, and they slipped off his nose again. He finally just pulled them off and put them in his pocket. He didn’t need them now anyway. "I can’t go home to my wife like THIS!"

"Relax, gentlemen, relax!" Professor Horst paced the room, his shirt-tail flapping. "I’ll admit I hadn’t expected us to regress this far, but we can make the best of it. My son’s old clothes are stored in the coat closet; I’m sure we can find something to fit. Then, we can all enjoy our ’second childhood’, as it were."

The men looked at one another.

"But... but what if someone recognises us?" Deacon Tumey mopped his forehead with his overhanging shirt-sleeve. "We’d never live it down!"

"Oh, don’t be ridiculous! We won’t be recognized. Nobody knows we’ve shrunk; noone would ever even imagine such a thing! We’re completely anonymous!"

In the next room, more smothered giggles.

"All we have to do is wait for our sons to leave..."

The boys nodded. As one, they emerged from the coat closet and noisily headed toward the door.

"WELL, WE BETTER GET STARTED ON THOSE CHORES!" Walt shouted for good measure.

"YEAH, I GUESS!"

They slammed the door, walked down the street a ways in case they were being watched, then doubled back and hid behind the fence. Presently, their fathers emerged, now dressed in Walt’s old clothes.

"I feel silly," Sheriff Blake complained, adjusting the collar of a suit Walt had outgrown years ago.

"Stop being such a grump," Professor Horst replied, donning his boy’s cap. "Now, all of you go back home and leave notes to your wives telling them you were called away on urgent business. Then we’ll all meet at the soda shop for sundaes!"

Judge Henderson smiled. "It’s been years since I’ve had a sundae."

"Wait, I’ve got an idea!" Deacon Tumey bobbed up and down, hardly able to contain his glee. "After we’re done with our sundaes, let’s hike down to the pond and take a swim!"

"A..." Sheriff Blake started. "But we’ve no bathing suits!"

"So?" Professor Horst laughed. "Boys don’t need bathing suits!"

"It’s a deal!" The men agreed, laughing and shaking hands before running off on their seperate ways.

Behind the fence, their sons exchanged looks of stunned glee.

"Oh, this is going to be SO good..."

 

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