New Baby Products

Neal and Betsy always laughed with each other when they drove by the New Baby Products sign. When they first moved to Birmingham, it seemed like everyone laughed at New Baby Products. At the restaurant where Neal bussed, all of the waiters had their own carefully crafted jokes about the place. Some of them were about the sign, with its predictable baby blue type and pink baby. Tim, the leader of the waiters, would guffaw like he did and say "it's like they're saying, "we have something for every baby. Every Crack Baby!" The other waiters laughed, but Neal just bussed in the background.

The next year, New Baby Products wasn't as funny. Birmingham got colder than Florida. Betsy looked thin and pale. She was so pretty when they left Florida. Now, even when Neal tried to joke about New Baby Products, Betsy just looked away. One time she said, "Neal, they sell cheap baby clothes. People need cheap baby clothes. It's not funny. It's sad."

Neal said, "We'll never have to shop there."

Neal started to think of his grandfather, and the bib he wore before he died and was too old to chew properly. They couldn't afford to place him in a home, so they bought him a bib. At twelve, Neal never considered where the bib came from. It was just a bib. Now he recalled the cookie monster graphic on it, and how his grandfather spittled on the cookie monster. Neal's mother wiped the bib now and again, but the spittle would often grow too heavy for the bib and drip down onto the grandfather's shirt and crotch. Grandfather would swipe at it, but eventually it sat where it fell, stagnating until Neal's mother came to wipe it away. Neal saw it all out of his peripheral vision. He didn't like his grandfather's spittle. It was easier to pretend it wasn't there.