“But that doesn’t make any sense!” said Rodney. “Usually, when a bad thing happens to the town, it happens to everybody equally.”
At just that moment the boys could hear the bathroom door open.
“Now we’ll find out!” said Wayne. “AUNT MILDRED! COME IN HERE!”
A moment later Aunt Mildred stepped into the room. She had a turban on her head made out of a bath towel. There was something very different about her that the boys could not put their finger on (besides the fact that she wore a towel turban — something they never remembered her doing before).
“I wondered when you were going to wake up,” said Aunt Mildred cheerily. “You were both sleeping so peacefully. You were sleeping just like babies.”
“Because wearebabies. Look at us,” said Wayne. “And why aren’t you a baby?”
Aunt Mildred shrugged. She had a smile on her face that did not go away.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Wayne testily. “Are you enjoying the fact that your great-nephews have been turned into babies?”
“I wasn’t enjoying that at all! I was merely taking momentary pleasure in the fact that when I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, it seemed as if I had grown at least ten years younger!”
Rodney nodded. It was making perfect sense to him now. “Aunt Mildred,” he said, “how old would you say Wayne and I look right now?”
“Well, if I can remember back to when you actually were babies, I would say you look as if you’re about eighteen months old.”
Rodney calculated aloud: “Wayne and I are around eighteen months old. Yesterday Wayne and I were thirteen years old and two months. That means that we have had a little over eleven-and-ahalf years chopped off our physical ages.”
“Oh don’t say ‘chopped,’ dear. Say ‘trimmed.’ It’s a much nicer word.” Aunt Mildred could not help herself: she giggled. “And what an even more pleasant surprise forme! I’m not justtenyears younger! I’m eleven-and-a-half years younger! Let me see. Oh goodness! I was sixty-five and now I’m fifty-three. And what’s more, I don’t look a day over forty-nine. Please note how soft and supple my skin looks now!”
Aunt Mildred pinched her cheeks so hard that they turned red.
Wayne’s face now took on a pout. He looked like a baby who had just done a little business in his diapers. “Don’t you even care that Rodney and I are now helpless infants?”
“Of course I care, dear. I care very much. But I’m not sure how helpless you are. Let’s see if you can walk so I won’t have to carry you around. But first, let’s get you out of these giant-sized pajamas so you won’t stumble.” Aunt Mildred went to Rodney’s bed and helped him out of his pajamas. He tried very hard with his little arms to be of some assistance but his tiny hands would not do what his brain wanted them to do. After Aunt Mildred had removed the top and bottom halves of his pajamas, Wayne started to laugh. It was very much a baby’s laugh, like a little baby giggle, but there was definite thirteen-year-old mirth involved. Mirth at Rodney’s expense.
“What are you laughing about, you chubby baby!” Rodney squeaked.
“You!” answered Wayne. “Those underpants look huge on you!”
“And you don’t have on huge underpants yourself?” Rodney shot back.
“I guess so,” said Wayne sheepishly. “I guess we both look pretty foolish.”
“Oh you look adorable!” said Aunt Mildred as she picked Rodney up and put him down on the floor. Then she went to Wayne’s bed and began to undress him. Once the boys had both been set upon the floor, they attempted together to pull themselves up into a standing position by climbing their little hands up their bedposts. After some grunting and a great deal of effort, they got themselves to their feet. It was a good start.
“Now come toward me, boys,” said Aunt Mildred, lowering herself to a squat. “Let me see if you are still babies or if you’ve reached the toddler stage yet.”
Rodney took a step away from his bed and promptly fell down. Wayne took a step away from his own bed and then another step and then another, each one coming faster than the last, until he was hurtling uncontrollably toward Aunt Mildred, on a collision course with her bony knees. Just short of his great aunt’s outstretched arms, Wayne toppled headlong to the floor.
“But that’s a good sign, isn’t it?” said Aunt Mildred, helping Wayne into a seated position and then clapping her hands gleefully together as if the boys really were babies who required encouragement. “It means that you just have to work at it a little and you’ll both be up and walking around in no time.”
Rodney scowled. “What are youtalkingabout, Aunt Mildred?” he said through his tiny baby mouth. “We’re not going to stay like this! I’m sure that the Professor is in his laboratory right this moment working on a machine to undo this. Can you take us to his house?”
“Right now? Right this very minute? But I have to get you some breakfast! I have to buy baby food! I have to go up into the attic and find your high chairs and find the double baby carriage that I used to roll you around in. It will take me all morning to get things ready for us to go to the Professor’s house. Why don’t I just call him up on the phone and have him come over?”
Rodney and Wayne looked at one another and shrugged. It probably did work better for the Professor to come there.
“Now crawl around if you like, but be careful and don’t pull any table lamps down on your heads.” (Aunt Mildred was always worried about things coming down on people’s heads and giving them amnesia as was always happening to the characters in her favorite radio soap opera Helen Grant, Backstage Nurse.)
Rodney scowled anew. “Aunt Mildred, we might look like babies to you, but we’re actually thirteen-year-olds who are merely trapped inside the bodies of babies.”
Aunt Mildred nodded. “I must remember that it is our physical bodies that have gotten younger and not our brains, or else you would not be able to talk to me the way you are and would be drooling a little. Please forgive me, boys. But I must say, though: it is such a delight to see you so young and adorable again. I so hated it when you boys had to grow up.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Wayne, trying his best to be agreeable, but still sounding like something the world had never before seen: a sarcastic baby.
From down the hall now came the sound of a ringing telephone. “Speak of the Devil! That could be Russell — I mean Professor Johnson!” exclaimed Aunt Mildred, clapping her hands together excitedly.
The now fifty-three-year-old Aunt Mildred who didn’t look a day over forty-nine put her hand to her chest as if to slow her fastbeating heart. “I wonder what the Professor will look like! Quite dashing, I’m sure!”
Wayne and Rodney sat on the floor and stared at each other in silence as they listened to their aunt scampering down the hallway. Then they could hear her talking on the phone, although she was too far away for them to tell what she was saying.
“You just watch, Wayne,” Rodney finally said. “I’ll be running all around this house before the end of the day. By tomorrow the both of us will be hard at work in the Professor’s lab, helping him to make this calamity go away.”