While babysitting his sister's adopted baby girl, Alvin received a mysterious gift box containing a Holiday-decorated decanter of a clear but unidentified liquid and a message: "Some spirits to lift your Holiday season. A Secret Admirer." So after placing the baby in a nearby playpen, Alvin plopped himself in a chair before the TV and began to sip the decanter's contents. "Tastes like Zima," he thought.

On television was an old Warner Brothers cartoon, "Fresh Airedale." It was about a sneaky dog that looks to his master to be loyal and brave, but is really selfish and cowardly. The dog takes credit for saving his master's home from burglars who were actually run off by the cat. The dog later takes credit for saving the President's pet when it was the other way around.

"I doubt any man could have been fooled that way in real life," Alvin said aloud. "That's what you think," the baby girl replied. Staring in disbelief at the baby, Alvin muttered, "I thought I heard you speak. It must be the spirits I just drank clouding my mind." But the baby just grinned and said, "Things aren't always what they appear.

"Until a few months ago, I was Lolly, the mistress of your sister's husband," the baby continued. "She found out about us, but instead of confronting me, she sent me a gift bottle of some strange spirit, and it reduced me to the 28-month old baby you've been babysitting. But in living with your sister and her husband, I saw that I was dead wrong about him. However, you are everything he is not."

Alvin pointed at the empty decanter. "That was Watkin's Age-Reducing Tonic, just like your sister sent me. I ordered it off the Internet when nobody was looking," baby Lolly said. She watched as Alvin began to slowly shrink out of his clothing. Climbing over the top of the playpen, Lolly was waiting at the foot of the chair when Alvin's regression stopped. Grabbing his foot, she pulled the now 24-month-old Alvin to the floor and affixed a spare Pampers around his bottom.

"There's no way that I could have married you while a baby, but now that you're one too, we can grow up again together. And when I am again nubile, I'll have long since convinced you of the reasons we should quickly become man and wife. What do you think about that?" Lolly said as she placed her arm around Alvin's shoulder. Resigned to his fate, Alvin merely let out with a nervous giggle.


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