Sugar Babies

Sugar Babies.  Neither sugar nor baby

Back in junior high, our biggest project for Home Ec was Sugar Babies.  Not to be confused with these happy little exotics to the right, rather a very translucent lesson in what a pain-in-the-ass a teenage pregnancy would be.

Each 8th grader had to lug around a 2lb bag of sugar for two solid weeks, pretending it was a baby.  I personally found this project embarrassing, but I will conceded that we learned a lot about babies that year.  For example:

• Babies are square and weigh 2 pounds.
• Babies melt in the rain.
• If you drop your baby, you can sweep it up, funnel the mess back into its body, and tape it up.  If it's a big accident, you can buy a new baby from the store and throw the old one out.  No one will know; all babies look the same.
• Babies take up a lot of room in your backpack.
• New parents are lying.  Babies do sleep through the whole night.  And day.
• Your parents will forget that you have a baby and/or don't expect you to care for it at home.
• Babies are fun to throw at each other when the two weeks are up.

In actuality, all our teachers were aware of this project and which of their class members had Home Ec that semester.  As such, babies were not allowed to be carried around in backpacks and to be kept in plain eyesight during other classes, and could be confiscated and marks deducted if you mistreated yours or someone else's.  I believe we were even required to keep the bag of sugar clothed or wrapped in a blanket.  Parents were informed of this project and notified to maintain the strict guidelines at home as well.  Luckily my parents weren't so stringent, but Amanda's mother had her set her alarm a few times in the middle of the night.

Most students did this project with as little effort as they used with all their other projects, but not the aforementioned Amanda.  Even at that age she was quite convinced that she would end up being a high school drop out teenage mother, and no less seemed quite pleased with that notion.  Her Sugar Baby had a name and arrived each day with a new outfit.  She happily carried it around with her for every moment of those two weeks and refused to join in the sugar fight when the project expired.

After school one day, Amanda, Dana and I went to the mall as we were apt to do, and Amanda was intent on renting a stroller for her Sugar Baby.  We went to Guest Services and rented one without needing to  explain, as Amanda's Sugar Baby was wearing a sleeper and had all the extremities stuffed, so it looked like an actual baby.  Mine and Dana's were both halfway between infant-resemblance and looking like we'd just been to the grocery store.  As Amanda carefully loaded her baby into the carriage,  I said to Dana "I'll just put mine underneath."  As I went to do that, a lady came screaming and running at us out of nowhere!  She let us know with no uncertain terms that babies are very delicate and cannot be left under strollers.  She was quite embarrassed when we told her they were bags of sugar, but it only served to teach us yet another lesson about babies - there is always someone watching and willing to tell you what you're doing wrong with them.