Negative Reinforcement

By Douglas Greene

The baby stares at me intently, as I snap his picture, like a deer caught in the headlights. No one would believe that the baby boy that my husband is bathing in our kitchen sink is actually Ross Cummings, our daughter's basketball coach. By the expression on his face, I can tell that he's finding it hard to believe himself.

Right about now, he's probably having second thoughts about the wisdom of exposing himself to young high school girls. If he could talk, he'd probably ask us how we did this to him, and how long we intend to keep him this way; but although he understands our every word, we've arranged it so that he can't talk, and we'll offer him no answers.

"Since you can't seem to keep your pants up," Our daughter, Melissa teases, "We decided to make it a bit more socially acceptable."

Poor Mr. Cummings shakes his head and babbles as my husband rinses him off. The doorbell rings, and suddenly the kitchen is filled with teenaged girls in basketball uniforms, all smiling at the adorable baby boy standing wide-eyed and naked in our sink.

I think that Mr. Cummings is probably getting rid of a lot of perverted ideas. Tomorrow, when he wakes up in his own bed, and his own body, he'll probably be much less inclined to display specific parts of his body to young girls. I suspect he'll have gotten all of those thoughts out of his system.

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