A Change of Heart

Most men love Camaros or windsailing or filet mignon.  They love women and Goodfellas and grease and Scotch.  They love Dave Chapelle and breaking things and fixing things.  Big dogs, sports knowledge and the underdog.  Lamps.  Sometimes, in drunk or otherwise vulnerable moments, they’ll reveal a secret love of footwear or Oprah or bubblebaths.  But Bub has revealed a new love, and it is rapidly bordering on obsession.  He loves Changing Table.

Now I feel somewhat responsible for all this, since I did in fact introduce the two.  It was about five months ago that they met, though I’m sure Bub could tell you the exact date.  Probably has it heart-stickered in his diary.  Seemed much like an ordinary autumn day to the rest of the world, but the forecast was warm and fuzzy in Bub’s heart, I can assure you.

There was nothing unusual, either, about the way they met.  Bub had a dirty diaper, Changing Table had been brought in specifically for this purpose.  Seemed pretty straightforward, the way you might meet a bus driver, for example.  Except that Bub would start riding this bus eight to ten times a day, and the driver would never change.  And I think we all know familiarity breeds creepiness.     

Right from the beginning, Bub seemed very comfortable with old C.T.  I guess that can happen quickly when you take your pants off daily in front of a complete stranger.  It’s safe to say he was almost instantly enamored.  Unfortunately, the feeling did not seem to be reciprocal.  As C.T. has stated in various police reports, it was “just doing it’s job” and in no way encouraged such behavior from Bub.

In hindsight, there were warning signs that Bub was developing an unhealthy obsession.  Sure, there were the occasional phantom dirty diapers.  The way he would sing “I Got You, Babe” every time we placed him on it.  The late night hang-ups on C.T.’s answering machine.  The flowers and stuffed turtles and boxes of truffles that Leah thought were for her.

His real strategic genius, though, was the way he would suddenly be cool as a penguin fart when placed on C.T., thus tricking us into leaving him there for extended periods of time, mere mules in his high stakes love-smuggling.  It was in these moments, then, that Bub’s desire gestated into a fullblown, lovesick monsterbaby.  These were also the times, according to the restraining order filed by C.T., that Bub allegedly made “inappropriate contact” with it, whispered sweet nothings to it and occasionally expelled superfluous bodily fluids upon it.

But all’s well that ends well.  Changing Table has caught a train on that Underground Changing Table Railroad and started a new life somewhere in the southwest.  It also had to change it’s name (to Changing Cushion) after Bub was caught Facebook-stalking it.  The poor dear.  It really did deserve better—such a welcoming and carefree changing table.  I’m told that through a dubious intermediary, Bub did acquire C.T.’s cell phone number.  Thank God he doesn’t know how to text pictures.