Hey, my name is John Jackson. I’m what you would pretty much call a normal guy. I do ok in school, play a couple of sports, and have a normal high school life. I work at Food-Lion (oh boy) to help earn a little money. I’m sixteen years old, and I’m a junior in high school.

Like a good number of guys my age, I also have a girlfriend. Her name is Carol, and she’s a really pretty and sweet girl. I’m really lucky to have found her. We have a great relationship; of course we get into fights every now and then, but we’re in love with each other and everything in our relationship is going really well.

My mom really likes her too. I can tell when my mom really likes someone because she always tries to embarrass me in front of people she likes. Her favorite tactic is to take out my old photo album with pictures of me as a baby. She’s done it so often that it really doesn’t embarrass me anymore, and I know she just does it cause she loves me, is proud of me like that, and likes the way that I’ve grown from being a cute little baby boy to the teenager I am today.

I have to admit too, I was a cute kid. I hate to admit it, but a couple of times I’ve pulled out the old album myself. I can barely remember it, but I get a little joy when I imagine my life back then. I especially recall my teddy bear and my baby blanket that I used to carry around with me all of the time. If I didn’t have one, I’d always have the other (and sometimes both). And in many of the pictures, I’m sucking my thumb while cuddling with my bear or my “blankie”. Of course my mom always brings up these stories in front of my friends.

But although it’s embarrassing, a part of me likes it. I’ll kill you if you tell anyone this, but sometimes I wish I could pull out my teddy or my blankie and just snuggle with it. But enough of that, I’m a manly sixteen year old guy.

Anyway though, back to Carol. She’s the greatest girl in the world, and this is why I felt so bad for her situation. It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, but I hate seeing her upset in any way, and she was definitely pretty upset over this one.

There really weren’t any jobs in our area at the time, and she really needed money. Her family had gotten pretty poor since her dad had left (stupid bastard), and she really needed to help her mom out. She had already been taking care of her younger brother and sister for a while, but now money had become a major problem for them.

My family helped them out when we could, but since my dad had died a few years ago, it was just me and mom. We sometimes had a little trouble getting by as well. Monetarily we were fine, but we didn’t have enough extra money to help Carol out.

The thing was that there were actually some jobs left in our town…. But they were baby-sitting jobs. Not a big deal, right? Carol had a lot of experience with kids because of her siblings and because she did some volunteer work. Plus, she loved working with kids, and she couldn’t wait to have her own. The problem was that she had no experience with babies. You know the feeding, the holding, the diaper changing, how much sleep they needed, and all that stuff. She was only a couple of years older than her siblings, so she never got the experience of taking care of babies.

One day we were talking about it while my mom was there, and my mom started talking to Carol. “It’s really not all that hard,” she said. “And you’d love it. They’re a bit of a hassle, but babies are really cute and fun to take care of. I could easily show you how to do everything. I’ve changed quite a few diapers in my time, especially with this guy right here!” She was referring to me again, more fun mom embarrassment.

“That sounds great,” said Carol. “But where are we gonna find a baby? I just can’t ‘practice’ with any of the other moms’ kids, right?”.

“That’s a good point, Carol,” replied mom. “I could teach you for short periods if our schedules worked out. But I don’t think many parents would lend us their baby supplies and let us practice in there houses. Let me think about it. I may come of with an idea”.

Later that night, mom had a talk with me. “John, you know how important this baby-sitting thing is to Carol. And I know you care about her. So I want to know if I could get your help with this whole situation.”

“Sure mom, you know I’m all for helping Carol out. But I don’t know a thing about taking care of babies. It would take me a whole day to figure out how to put a diaper on, and I’d probably never get a baby to stop crying.”

“Oh I know. I just want to know if you’d do anything to help Carol out.”

“Sure mom, I’d do anything.”

“Ok then. I just want you to show up next week when I start teaching her. We can go to the church nursery; they have plenty of baby supplies and furniture there. I’ve talked to the pastor and he doesn’t mind. ”

“Ok mom, I’ll be there. But how did you find a baby you could take to the church?”

“Oh, you’ll see during our first session. Thank you, John, your help means a lot.”

I was pretty confused. Like I said, I don’t know anything about babies, and quite frankly, I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable around them. I know it’s kinda weird for guys, but I really like babies. I think they’re cute and I’d love to hold one just to know I’m taking care of him or her. It’s just that I’m afraid I might mess something up, plus the fact that I’m a little embarrassed to admit I want to learn to take care of babies. It just doesn’t seem like a real masculine thing. You know me, the manly baseball player guy.

Nonetheless, I was intrigued by this plan. Maybe this would be some good experience for me to learn how to take care of babies. Plus I would have the excuse that I was helping out Carol, so I wouldn’t feel so bad or embarrassed about it.

But I would have never expected what mom had in mind.