Crying Machines

I love girls' softball. I played many seasons when I was younger, though I was never very good. So I jumped at the chance to sit in the semi-warm sun last week and take in a varsity game at the nearby highschool, wishing I knew someone either on the field or one of the spectators. No luck at finding a friend, but I did get a tan line (and turned my nose bright red inspite of my foundation containing sunblock).

But the fun wasn't just in the outfield. Two of the girls on our team had their home economics projects with them. You know the one: it started as a raw egg, then evolved into a sack of flour, and then here we are a few years later with the robotic baby doll. This state-of-the-art baby will cry, then teenage student mom must scramble to feed it the pretend bottle, change it, burp it, give it it's pacifier, meanwhile some chip inside the doll is recording the response time and then the student will be graded on how long the baby cried.

I saw one of these babies go off in the grocery store one time. We were standing in line at the cashier when the doll really started to wail. People were shouting out suggestions and advice from four lines away in effort to help the frantic girl and her poor mother.

These softball players couldn't just leave their assignments at home, and brought them to the game, carseat and all. Every now and then they would have to stop in the middle of warm-ups to run over and plug in a pacifier. My husband, sitting next to me, was slower to pick up that they were just dolls.

The real fun for me, the spectator, started when the game did. You see, these athletes couldn't take these babies into the dugouts. Project: Babysitter. The dolls were handed off to the girls' dads, or rather, the student grandfathers. There was something comical, yet precious about grown men teaming up to quiet the crying babies. They laid the doll on the grass...offered the bottle...offered the pacifier...changed the diaper...and even more adorable: burped it. These dad's made an all-out effort to calm this robot.

I don't know first hand, but these projects seem genius. What better way for these teenagers to learn how hard it can be to have a baby at such a young age. I'm sure it's also educational for the parents of the students too, especially after they're dragged into the project. Surely there's more talk about abstinence in the home as a result of these assignments.

Something that struck me as odd: one of the mom's showed up late for the game and her annoyance at the assignment was overly obvious, mostly because she kept repeating: "stupid assignment" as she bounced and patted the babies back as if it were real. She was not into it the way the dads had been.

Nevertheless, it was fun to watch the crowd and listen to the jabs offered by other audience members. I even saw the grandmother of one of the softball players walk up and ask if she could see the other girl's baby. Then they sat and compared the two infants.

I hope some will get the message, and learn from these crying robots. But one lesson they won't learn through this assignment: how stinky and often those poopy diapers are.