To Jeff's surprise, his mom took his Sesame Street t-shirt off him and took a white one-piece pajama with a green crocodile on it from a drawer in the changing table. She slid his legs and arms through it and closed it with a long zipper that extended from his crotch to his neck. "It's half past twelve - time for your nap, Jeffy!" she said. Jeff didn't feel tired at all, but she laid him down in a baby bed with high bars around it right away. He would have protested, but then he saw Mr. T - his old teddy bear he had owned and loved until he grew ashamed of him in elementary school. Seeing his big, brown, fuzzy friend right next to himself, Jeff was overcome by an urge to hug the bear. Mom covered them both with the blanket and stroked Jeff's head.
"Sleep tight, darling. I'll put on some music for you." Jeff watched her put a cassette tape in a white recorder designed for children. He hadn't seen a tape in about a decade The clicks when she closed the recorder and pressed play made him nostalgic. A nursery rhyme started to play, quietly, but loud enough to keep away that eerie silence in which the creaks and cracks of doors and wooden furniture made little boys believe in ghosts and monsters. Jeff had needed some kind of music to get to sleep for a long time, until he was seven or eight years old. Responding to another urge of his toddler body, he put his thumb in his mouth and begun to suck.
He looked around in the room, lit softly by rare November sun through closed curtains. It was the same one he still lived in at age 15, but almost all the furniture was different. He remembered the changing table. It would still be there a few years later, not for its original purpose, but as storage space, until it got replaced by a desk when he started school. On the other hand, he didn't remember the bed at all. By the time of his earliest memories, it had already been replaced by a normal bed without bars. Neither did he remember ever wearing anything like this weird and vaguely uncomfortable pajama. It covered his feet as well, so it would be hard to walk around in it. Along with the bars on the bed it made it impossible to get out - or did it? Jeff was curious, and part of him yearned for toddler adventure, hoping to see more of this big and long-gone world. But another part just wanted to snuggle up to Mr. T and have a nice nap.
Jeff was torn, but after a few minutes he decided to...