The True Story of My "Baby Think It Over" Doll

I went to a Catholic high school (with Elizabeth!) in Mobile, Alabama that was quite focused on three things:

• Academics
• The "Dirty Dozen" volleyball team (trust me, they were legit)
• Premarital Sex

Being a Catholic high school and all, it might seem obvious that premarital sex was a big no-no.  Perhaps because we were teenagers, our teachers felt it necessary to go completely over the top when preaching this message.  First was the "Sex with the Freshman" lectures where the freshman girls and boys were separated for detailed discussions on sex and how it was for procreation only and if you have sex even one single time, you will get pregnant and sex for anything other than procreation, even among married couples, is a mortal sin.  (Mortal sins, for you non-Catholics, are the biggies.  Like, right up there with murder.  And yes, we rank sins.)

Then it was our religion classes where we learned how we will be smote down from the heavens for premarital sex and how we shouldn't even "tempt" the sin by making out or kissing or any other manner of high school activities.  I clearly remember a religion teacher telling our class, "you don't rev the engine unless you're planning to start the car."  Being a teenage virgin, the analogy went right over my head.  But I digress.

Our Senior year of high school was where they really hit the message home.  Unfortunately, not everyone in our class got the "premarital sex is bad - really bad" message because we did end up with a couple of pregnant girls in my graduating class.  You can imagine the President of our school (a married Catholic priest with children - it's a long story) felt.  It was very, very unusual.

So, I took psychology Senior year (and I think Elizabeth was in my class too?).  True to the stereotypes, our psychology teacher was a complete nut job who was in and out of school and made us watch "Sybil" which completely scarred me for life.  

For reasons I still don't comprehend, psychology was also the class where we'd get a scarily life-like electronic doll called "Baby Think It Over" to tote around for a week.  Most high schools do eggs or sacks of flour.  We got a seven pound electronic wonder child that cried every three hours for feedings and diaper changes and had a sensor in it that could tell if you shook the baby or dropped it.

Our grades were dependent upon how quickly we responded to the baby crying and how many times we dropped/shook the baby.  There was a key in the back of the baby that you had to turn and hold for 15 minutes to represent feedings.  The baby had to be with us 24 hours a day, just like a newborn.  There was also a suggestion of borrowing a car seat to make sure the baby didn't rattle around in our car.  

Day 1 with Baby Think It Over was miserable.  Abby (my doll) cried all. freaking. night.  I was exhausted at school the next day and totally embarrassed when I had to tote her to a basketball game that night.  I was a cheerleader and was therefore cheering at the game.  I laid her in between my feet in the bleachers so I would know when she started making her loud, annoying, electronic cry.  Of course, she started right up, so I sat there with this doll on my lap, holding the key in her back for the requisite 15 minutes while everyone else chanted "S Score Score."

 The next day, I figured out a solution for Dear Abby.  See those little hands right there? I figured out that if I strung a rubber band from her hand to the key, it would hold the key in place so I wouldn't have to manually hold it myself.  I tried it once and it totally worked.  To prevent her from getting tossed around in my car, I wedged her good and tight between the seats.  Abby became only a slight inconvenience.  When she cried in the middle of the night, I'd just attach the rubber band and go back to sleep.

I got an A.

Abby is going to haunt me the rest of my life for my sins. The ghosts of plastic babies past are going to ensure that my real, precious baby (whom I would never wedge between car seats - y'all know that, right? just feel compelled to say that) will be a fussy crier.  No worries, Dear Abby.  No shortcuts this time around.