Life Could Be a Dream

Chapter 4- Fear of the Future

I feel like this is important for the main storyline of the Cars portion of story.

Chapter 4: Fear of the Future

Fudge had not taken long at all to fit into life in the small remote desert town. Some things, though, did take longer for her.

For example, Fudge learned to crawl on Christmas Day. That was a very happy day for the RS gang, especially since they had all felt like losers that day. Fudge's first Christmas had not turned out as well as they had hoped. So, at least their newest and youngest member had accomplished something. (Even if it meant that from then on, changing her diaper became all the more difficult. Fudge had always hated it, but now she was able to crawl, she tried to get away.)

The very next day, her dads had to make a dash to the hardware store in Couperville to baby proof their home/store.

"Why do they even need to baby proof?" Sarge wondered while they were gone. "Parents nowadays are so overprotective!" It was clear from the start that he had disapproved of the way the two Italians raised their daughter. He had been that way ever since Luigi had declared that the Ferber method was cruel. The Jeep disagreed, but he couldn't convince the Fiat otherwise.

"Is that such a bad thing, man?" Fillmore countered. "It means they care about her."

Everyone turned to look at the six-month-old, who was crawling around the café. They wanted to keep her safe, of course, but she needed the freedom to explore.

"Howdy, y'all!" Mater shouted as he came tearing up to Flo's.

"Careful, Mater!" Doc warned.

Too late. The clumsy tow truck bumped into the little girl, albeit not very hard. She tumbled to the ground and immediately started bawling.

"Oh, honey!" Flo cooed, scooping her up. "It's okay, it's okay! You're okay!"

For a moment, all of the patrons at the café were in shock. That could've been much worse. They knew that that was the biggest danger in cars raising a human.

Doc checked her over.

"Seems to be okay", he reported, "but you must be more careful next time, Mater. Humans are much more vulnerable than us cars."

"What's vulnerable mean?" Mater wondered.

"Never mind. Just be careful next time. Don't forget. She's just a baby too."

Time went by. Babyproofing was no problem for the multi-talented Guido and between that and everyone's being much more mindful of the infant, there were very few incidents as Fudge became more mobile. "A few" of Luigi's relatives came over from Italy to meet Fudge when she was eight months old, but that turned out to be practically half of Italy. They were all enthralled by the little girl as well and were over the moon for Luigi and Guido.

Fudge's next big milestone, however, came when she was eleven months old.

It was just a typical morning at Flo's. Everyone was just sipping their oil, feeling content. They never used to, but now that Fudge was around, they were.

Luigi checked Fudge at one point during breakfast and announced, "Does Fudgie need a diaper change?" He picked her up and she burst into tears, squirming like crazy. Nobody knew how she always knew that she was being changed (nor did they understand why she hated being changed), but she did.

"Sorry, Fudgie", Luigi tried to soothe her. "Papà needs to change your diaper. Be a good girl for Papà."

"Papà", Fudge repeated.

Gasps were heard all around.

"What did you just say?!" Luigi asked, amazed. "Did you just say Papà?"