Pudgy and Precocious - The World of Baby LeRoy Read online

gettin' closer and closer to a nervous breakdown with all that worrying you're doin', combined with all those interruptions in your sleeping patterns?

  Yeah, you know what I mean: all this suffering and more is what you go through when you have a baby in the house. But I'm comin' to the rescue, 'cause I'm here to tell you the solution to all those problems of yours.

  It's simple: hire a shapely Mexican nanny!

  True, you'll have to pay her some cash, but on the other hand, it doesn't have to be much, as long as you give her a little room to sleep in, and some grub to eat so she doesn't waste away and drop dead on you. And even if she isn't satisfied with the actual cash amount you fork over to her, what's she gonna do? Complain to the authorities, who will then find out that she's an illegal, and put her back on the next plane to Mexico? Naw, she'll be happy with a pittance, especially if your baby is as cute as I am: her motherly instincts will soon kick in, and she'll be hooked on her job!

  Now, you might ask just why I say "shapely" Mexican nanny. Gee, I thought you could tell me! I think it's a word that's not so decent, since I learned it when I heard Dad talkin' on his cell phone to a friend of his. It was just after he and Mom hired Maria, and he was tellin' Fred - that's his friend - about her. But just after he said it, Mom walked into the room, and he kinda looked a little scared. I figured he was afraid Mom had heard it, so it must've been somethin' she might get mad about.

  On the other hand, judgin' from the look on his face when he said it to Fred, I knew it must be some kinda compliment, as far as Maria was concerned. And hey, this nanny deserves all the compliments I can heap on her, so "shapely" is good enough for my vocabulary!

  Anyway, not only will you be happier when she takes a lot of work off your hands, but your baby will be the proudest twerp on the block: his very own shapely Mexican nanny! Wow!

  Look at all the advantages you'll have:

  Your little one can learn Spanish with no effort at all. As a matter of fact, he'll have to learn it, whether he wants to or not, since that's about all he'll be hearin' from his nanny.

  You'll have somebody else to boss around, besides your kid. He'll be grateful that the nanny takes the flak that otherwise might have been comin' his way!

  She can go shoppin' for you whenever you want, while you watch your soap operas.

  She can clean the floor if your cat gets a fur ball stuck in his throat and throws up all over the place (I mention that because it happened to Clarence just the other day. Whew, was that ever disgusting!)

  If your baby bawls in the middle of the night, she will be the one who has to get up and see what he wants, while you go on enjoyin' your beauty sleep.

  Your husband will be happier than ever. At least, my dad seems a whole lot more content with life since María moved in. And he gets a lot more attention from Mom now, so I guess that's good, too.

  It will make you a better Christian, since if you don't hire her, she may have to live on the streets and eat out of dumpsters, and might croak of some disgustin' disease or another, if she doesn't die of hunger first. So givin' her a place to live, and a steady job, might just be savin' her life. Hey, you can't be much more Christian than that, can you? (I guess it would make you a better Jew, Moslem, Buddhist, or Atheist, too, but I'm not sure, since my life hasn't been long enough for me to get into those religions very much.)

  So you see, hiring a shapely Mexican nanny will not only save you a lot of headaches: it may even open the doors to Paradise for you when you finally give up the ghost!

  Not bad for the few measly bucks you'll be payin' her, is it?

  This isn't María, either, and even if it were, Mom wouldn't let her dress like that, but hey, they say that pictures are really good to spruce up a book!

  How I got the Name "LeRoy" - Ugh!!

  About a month ago, when I was learnin' French, I discovered that my name means "The King".

  No, I don't mean the "Sprenkle" part. I don't know what the heck that means, though I do intend to find out.

  I mean the "LeRoy" part. When I saw that it was just a French way of sayin' "king", it rrreally warrmed my hearrrt (as María would say).

  Not that there is anything heart-warmin' about kings. Some were really bad, as a matter of fact. When readin' a chapter in Will Durant's "Story of Civilization" (my favorite history books, by the way), I read about a king who would have you chopped up into little pieces at the drop of a hat, even if you didn't even have a hat to drop.

  But on the other hand, a lot of 'em were good, and in any case, bein' a king is about as far as anybody can reasonably hope to get in this life, so it's a pretty special thing, even if you don't win any prizes for bein' Mr. Nice Guy.

  What warmed my heart was the fact that Mom and Dad had so much faith in my future, even when I was just a new-born, that they decided to give me a royal name!

  Of course, it could have also been because they liked Elvis − you know, that guy who sang so well in those movies, but whose actin' skills were about as good as those of my cat Clarence.

  But no, that couldn't be it, or they would prob'ly just've named me "Elvis" and been done with it. So if they called me "the King", it must've been 'cause they thought I was really gonna go places in this world!

  Well, at least that's what I thought back then.

  Today though, things look different. Here's how it happened...

  Mom was home today (it was María's day off... gosh, I really hate Thursdays!), and she had just come over to my playpen to cover me up with my fake-fur blanket so that I could take my early morning nap. When she did, and before she could turn off my laptop, I pointed to what I had written on the screen:

  "Hey Mom, why did you and dad decide to call me "LeRoy", anyway?"

  Now, I know what your thinkin': that I was fishin' for compliments. And the truth is, you're right!

  But some things in life don't work out the way we had figured they would...

  "Oh, that!", Mom answered, almost embarrassed. "Well, you see, I had an uncle named LeRoy. He died just after you were born. But a couple of months before, he had told me that he was going to leave me $100,000 in his will. So... well, I thought that naming you after him was the least I could do to show my gratitude. But don't worry! In a few years, when you start going to school, if a lot of kids make fun of your name, we could talk to our lawyer about having it changed!"

  I was stunned. Dumbfounded. If I could talk, believe me, I would have been speechless!

  Not about the school part: as you may or may not already know, I plan to run away from home before they can send me to one of those institutions (ever notice how places you don't wanna go are always called "institutions"? You know, like prisons, mental hospitals, schools, etc.). But it was the principle of the thing...

  They didn't name me LeRoy because of their trust in my magnificent future. It was because some rich uncle that kicked the bucket soon after I took my first breath, before I even had a chance to meet him, had promised them 100,000 measly bucks!

  You know, they say that little kids think of their parents as gods. And I was no exception. I used to think that Mom and Dad could do no wrong. Even when they did things I got mad about, somewhere deep down inside me, I thought that maybe − just maybe − they were right, 'cause after all, they're a lot older than me − ancient, you might say, just like the gods.

  But today, dear reader, I am no longer livin' under this dumb illusion. I now know them for what they are: a couple of people who would give their only kid a really dumb name just to please an uncle they didn't like too much anyway, and just because they wanted some easy cash!

  I hate to say this about my own flesh and blood, but you know what they are now, in my opinion? Human. Only human!

  Mom and dad, simply a couple of money-grubbin' people just like you and me! How's a baby supposed to live with such knowledge, and not go crazy?

  I'm feelin' really depressed right about now. Guess I'll have to take my late-morning nap a bit early tod
ay. But before I go to Dreamland, lemme tell ya one thing: if you ever have a kid, just hope and pray that your rich uncle's name isn't "LeRoy"!

  Here's the cemetery where Great Uncle LeRoy is buried. May he rest in peace (if that's possible after bribin' Mom to give me a name that might end up ruinin' my life, and makin' all the girls laugh at me. Oh well, I can always become a priest, I guess.)