Proud Mary

This is one of the silliest things my eyeballs have even seen. Ever! My friend Mary is a grandmother. We just call her Grandma Mary now. That must suck being so young and being called that by your peers. Maybe I should be nicer. Well, not really.

You see that baby? He’s plastic! He is not real, people. Yet my dear friend, the doting grandmother, carries him around carefully, covers him with warm blankets, puts him in a child safety seat, feeds and burps him.

Mary’s daughter is taking a child development class and was given the bionic baby for a weekend. He has a computer in his body that will determine her grade based on the care he is given. He has to be handled with care and always attended by an adult. When Mary’s daughter left for work, Grandma Mary stepped in.

She came to my house to show off the “baby” and have a cup of coffee. But she barely got to take a sip and that little bundle of fakeness was screaming his stupid rubber head off. You would swear to God he was real the way she jumped up and fussed with him. It was the funniest thing ever.

And just like a real baby, every time she sat down, he cried. Mr. Lane scooped up the baby and lifted his shirt.

“He won’t latch on. Oh God! My baby won’t take my milk!” He cried in his very best “Hand that Rocks the Cradle” impersonation.

Mary took the baby away from the pervert and fed him his fake bottle. You could hear him suck and gasp like a hungry baby does while drinking. Then she burped him. When he made a happy baby coo after his belch, she smiled proudly. “Did you hear that?! He’s so happy now.”

Two seconds later, she set him down in his baby carrier, grabbed her coffee cup and “Whhhaaahaaahahahahaa!”

Up she jumped again. “He must need his diaper changed.

That was certainly the highlight of my day. It seems the little bionic one is anatomically correct, and Proud Grandma Mary was beyond thrilled to point that out to us. “See his little pee-pee?”

Much too happy about her grandson’s pee-pee, I had to intervene as she continued to poke his privates.

“Don’t molest the baby, Grandma Mary.”

Mary and I were planning on going out to dinner with our husbands and a couple of friends that night. It occurred to me that her daughter had to work until 10.

“Um, Grandma Mary, what exactly are you going to do with it when we go out?”

“IT?”

“I’m sorry. Him. What are you doing with him when we go out tonight?”

“I’m taking him with.”

“Oh shit,” Mr. Lane and I said in unison.

“What if he cries? What if you have to change him?”

“You aren’t going to show his pee-pee off to everyone at the restaurant are you?”

“Calm down, guys. He’ll be fine… I think.”

Off we went. Six grownups and a bionic baby. She had him in a carrier, covered with a warm blanket when we walked in.

The hostess asked, “Do you have reservations?”

“Um…” we all looked blankly at each other.

“Okay, just a second.”

The hostess returned and said, “We only have one table but it’s in the smoking section. Will that be okay with the baby?”

Mr. Lane chuckled and said, “He loves to smoke.”

With a puzzled look on her face, she seated us. We were put way in the back by a table with a family who had a baby. A real baby. I guess they like to stick all of the potential tantrums in one section.

“Would you like to be seated in the smoking, nonsmoking, tantrum or nontantrum section?”

Thankfully all went well. Bionic baby didn’t fuss until we were getting ready to leave. When he started, Mr. Lane said something obnoxious like, “Shut that kid up.”

Everyone at the other table, where the real baby was, looked right at us with disgust.

Grandma Mary jumped up, took him out of his seat and showed him to the people sitting next to us. She felt like she had to explain why my husband was being a dick to a little baby. She stimmered and stammered her way through the story, which was by far one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed. I would have let them call social services on us.