I'm Good With Kids

Chapter 1
Day 1

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Chapter Description: The first day of the craziest job Jeff will ever have.

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Day 1

I’m very excited but then again, $15 an hour sounds good to just about any teen. I was recently offered a job for the next couple of weeks to babysit one kid. By then end of the two weeks I’ll have just over $1200 which is all I need to help pay for my first car. It couldn’t be any easier, mostly because of the fact that i’m good with kids.

My normal job as a swimming instructor is mainly the reason. I can’t be telling them to fuck off whenever one of them gets on my nerves. That’s not a problem for me anyways. I take pleasure in the lack of knowledge they have in the world. It just makes explaining or doing anything for them very simple.

I make my way down my street. Lucky for me, the house is only a few doors down. It seems like everyone that’s important to me lives on my block. My grandmother lives right across from my house and my girlfriend lives right at the end of the street.

I’m so lucky to have someone as beautiful as her as my girlfriend. Growing up with Jessica allowed me to see her grow from a brunette that’s missing her two front teeth to the 5’6, DD breasted beauty I have today.

I myself am 6’1 and athletic 17 year-old. I have medium-length dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. I also need to wear contacts but that’s something I don’t mind. I’m not crazy muscular but in order to keep my job and spot on the track team, I need to keep myself fit. I also have the perk of being able to change my personality at a whim. I act certain ways in front of different ways in front of different people. I seem like a model student in front of my teachers while a total sarcastic asshole in front of my friends. The best part is I don’t need to act because I’m so open minded.

I walk up to the front step of the two storey house. The front yard has the odd child’s toy scattered on it while the garden is filled with vibrant colours of different flowers. It’s very obvious that a family lives here. I give large, wooden door a few knocks and wait patiently.

Mrs. Johnson need to pull double shifts during the next couple of weeks so apparently no one can watch her 6 month-old newborn baby. I was very lucky that this was happening between sessions at my job so that I could do this.

The door opened just enough for the chain-lock to stop it. Mrs. Johnson peaked her head between the crack to see who was at her door. She smiled at me then shut the door so she could unlock it. As she opened the door she reached her arms to the sky.

“Thank you god for my savior is here” she shouted while looking up at the overcast sky.

“You know it’s no problem Mrs. Johnson. Babysitting you kid is going to be fun”. I gave her a smile.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m very thankful for your help, Jeff”. She sighed and paused for a minute. “Anyways, come on in… And call me Linda”.

She led me into her home. I took off my sneakers at the front door and looked around. A giant plasma television was sitting in the living room to my right with lots of toys and a jolly jumper in front of it. She gave me a quick tour of the house, pointing out the kitchen, dining room, living room, bathrooms, play room. She paused at the basement.

“I’d also like to ask if you could not go down there. I’m not hiding anything or something creepy like that, I’m just getting in renovated and I’d rather not have to deal with a teen that fell on a saw”.

“No problem” I responded. “Seems reasonable”.

She then took me upstairs and also asked me to avoid her bedroom for personal reasons. just to the next of it, however, was the baby’s room.

She slowly opened the door and said, “and this is Claire’s room”.

I only just realized that I didn’t know the name of the kid. I didn’t even know what gender she was. I probably could’ve put two and two together by looking at the pink walls, pink changing table and well… pink everything.

We then walked back downstairs and I followed. She put on her maroon jacket and her shoes. As she walked out the door she gave me the normal speech.

“Emergency numbers are on the fridge. Call me if anything is wrong. Money for pizza is on the counter”.

“No problem” I responded. “Good luck with the extra shifts and everything. You should take a vacation or something after all of this”.

“Yeah” she scoffed. “I wish”

We then exchanged our goodbyes and she left. I took a seat in front of the television and put on the hockey game. By the time the game was over and the Kings won in overtime, it had already been two hours.

“Easiest job ever” I mumbled to myself.

After surfing around the channels and seeing that there won’t be anything good on for another hour, I decided to see if there was anything that the house may offer. I started in the kitchen. Nothing really that interesting there. Just cabinets packed with baby food and a fridge filled with baby formula. Or was that breast milk? It didn’t really concern me so I kept looking around.

I was just about to go upstairs and check on Claire when the basement caught my eye. Linda really knew how to make someone curious as hell about something. I looked at the clock and realized that she wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. I decided to use the fact that I may be back here, doing the same job, in the future and may need to go down there for something. It was a really bad reason but it gave me the confidence to open the door so i didn’t care.

What first surprised me was that it didn’t smell like sawdust or something. My house had an entire floor added to it and Linda’s basement didn’t smell anything like a construction site. I walked down the, what seemed like very unstable, stairs and looked around the room. The room could certainly use a renovation but at this moment, it just looked like a hoarder’s paradise. Just a bunch of boxes and various objects.

I felt bad but I started to look through a few. There was an old mirror in one, some toys in another and various clothing in most of them. Then, just beneath the stairs a fancy box on top of a wooden workbench caught my eye. It looked out of place from all the dust covered crap that filled the basement. It was stained with some crazy drawings. I lifted the lid back and the hinges caught it just before it banged on the bench. Inside this crazy shoebox was a necklace. I picked it up and looked at it. It had some more of the crazy drawings on it and it looked golden.

Before I could get a better look at it I heard Claire start to cry. I quickly put the medallion around my neck, telling myself that I would get a better look at it once I was done with Claire. I then ran upstairs.

Opening the door to Claire’s nursery, I wasn’t sure right away why she was crying. I walked over to her crib and bent over. I gave her diaper a pat and found out that she had wet herself. This was the one part i could truthfully say that I didn’t like about kids. As I bent over to pick her up Claire’s crying slowed as she made a curious face. She started swatting at the necklace that was hanging right over her. I smiled.

“Do you know what this crazy thing is about” I asked jokingly.

I reached down to pull the medallion away from her. I really didn’t want to break anything of Linda’s, especially after I told her that I wouldn’t go in the basement. Once I touched it’s golden exterior, the strangest thing began to happen. It started glowing. There was no sun reflecting off of it, I wasn’t looking at it weird; it was the weirdest thing. Before I could even react I started feeling faint. Before I knew it I was falling over and I blacked out.

“Great” I thought to myself. “The first time I’ve ever fainted was during a babysitting job.”

I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the ceiling with myself laying on the floor. It was weird though; the floor felt more like padding, not carpet. I rolled over to my left to see wooden bars. The wooden bars from Claire’s crib. I was starting to freak out. Did I fall in the crib when I passed out? SHIT did I land on Claire. I soon found that it was much worse than that.

I lifted myself up to hear a crinkle; the crinkle of a diaper to be more specific. I looked down to see that I was now completely naked except for my diaper. Wait...my diaper? I started to panic in a completely different way. What the hell happened to me. I was so small that I could fit in a crib. I looked tiny and very pudgy, like I had my baby fat back. It was difficult to move, almost like my muscles were non existent.

I couldn’t believe what happened. I was a baby. A baby with a… wet… diaper. I SWAPPED BODIES WITH CLAIRE. This was… this was weird. Mostly terrifying. A million questions flooded my mind. What happened? Why did it happen? How was I going to fix this? One of them was answered moments later, however, when I saw a very familiar person stand up next to the crib.

“Bwa” (What..). I tried to talk but quickly learned that that ability was gone.

I could only watch as my body stood up on two legs and look around confused with what had happened. All of the sudden Claire paused when she caught a glance of me in the bed.

“Is that… is that me?” she said perfectly.

“Gwa bah ga ga?” (you can talk)?

We both paused for a moment, realizing that we have both kept a few traits of the bodies that we were now in. Claire then looked down at that medallion she was now wearing and realized something. It took me another couple of seconds to realize the same thing.

“This thingy must have swapped our bodies!” Claire shouted.

She started to speak a lot more now and it was scaring me more than I was already.

“This is soooooo cool. One minute I’m in that crib and the next I’m here. I can’t believe it!”

“BAH! BAH BU GAG GAH!” (HEY! BEND OVER SO I CAN TOUCH IT!). I once again tried to say, only able to actually speak gibberish.

“Wow…” she began. “Is that what I sound like? Mister, I can’t understand you anymore. You look sad though…”

Of course I was sad. I was also scared, angry and a little embarrassed.

“First, let’s get you out of that diaper”.

She took off the necklace and put it on the floor. She was smart and hesitant to switch back. This didn’t look good for me. With ease, I was lifted across the room and place on the plastic changing table.

It was surreal. Everything was so big to me. I can’t remember the last time I was carried like that considering 5 minutes ago I was 150 pounds heavier. Claire took off the diaper and put another one on in a matter of moments. I guess having that happen to her two or three times a day rubbed off on her. She then picked me up again and put me back in the crib. Once I was let go, I reached through the bars, trying to point at the medallion on the floor.

“Now..” Claire began. “I know you want to swap back into your big boy body, and you will eventually. I was just thinking that I could explore things a little. I have been a baby for a long time now and want to explore”.

I couldn’t take it anymore. All that fear, humility and sadness bundled up inside of me finally came out. I started to tear and eventually started crying.

“Don’t worry mister. I promise I will switch back. I just want to learn things and see things. There is a lot I want to do”.

I was very obvious by the fact that she didn’t want to see me cry. She picked up the medallion and quickly finished her sentence. Before I knew it she shut the door and left me in her nursery. Alone.

I tried to stand up on two legs but I couldn’t do it. I could only roll over and crawl on all fours. I tried to escape this infantile prison but I eventually gave up after about 10 minutes of pointless rolling. I thought about it for a minute. I can’t talk and can barely move. There is no escaping for now. The best thing I could do for myself is take a nap and imagine that I wasn’t in this situation. I couldn’t believe that I was doing this but I rolled over to the Elmo stuffed animal and used it as a pillow. I tried to think of comforting things like school, my house and Jessica. Before I knew it I was sleeping like a baby.

“Hello? Jeff are you here?”

I woke up to the sound of Linda walking in the front door. I was laying on the floor of the nursery. It was obvious that it had been a couple of hours because it was dark out. I then thought about that crazy dream. Swapping bodies with Claire. It was a scary thought. I actually took comfort in the idea that I had somehow passed out for a couple of hours. I then saw the necklace around my neck and shivered. I put it in my pocket and left the nursery. It seemed like Linda was worried that I had ditched my job because I hadn’t answered after a while.

“I’m here, I’m here!” I whispered to her as I walked down the stairs. “I was just putting Claire to bed”.

Linda seemed so thankful and was happy that I did a good job. I just hoped that nothing went wrong when I was asleep. She thanked me, paid me my $90 and led me out of her house. She looked exhausted and tired; I tried to leave as fast as I could so she could get to bed.

I walked down my street, in the dark and looked at the streetlights. I felt a little scarred from that dream I had. I was also a little worried about the fact that I passed out. I knew I had to get over it though because there were still 13 more days to go

 

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