I’m every teenager’s worst nightmare. I cry at the slightest inconvenience, wake you up in the middle of the night and persist as a thorn in your side for every waking moment. My needs come before yours, and on top of that, my survival determines your grade. Yes, I’m the feared robot baby that haunts the high school child development class. Here is my day in hell. 

How can these flailing freshmen take care of me when they can barely take care of themselves, you may ask? I ask myself the same question every day. You’d be surprised about the amount of abuse I endure on the daily. Hot car? Left in it. Pavement? Dropped on it. Food? Choked on it. You name it, and it has happened. 

My day, and therefore my high schooler’s day, begins at the crack of dawn when a rumble in my stomach tells me I’m  hungry. Given that I am an infant, my only option to alert my caregiver is to scream at the top of my lungs. You’d think my piercing screech would be enough to wake my teenager from their slumber, but you’d be surprised how often this fails. They sleep like the dead, and their neglect sickens me.

After my fruitless attempts go on for a good while, a parent finally intervenes. My grandmother, you could say, saves the day by waking up my high schooler. Apparently, a gentle shake is enough to wake up when it’s coming from your mother, but a distressed cry from your child isn’t. Hmm. Selective hearing is real. Or maybe my “mom” takes joy in being an absent parent. Could go either way. 

Anyways, I finally get clumsily fed by my teenager. Since we are running late (per usual), I get shoved into the same outfit I have been wearing for two weeks straight. Robot babies have a sense of fashion too, and the yellow overalls with hot pink polka dots are dragging my dignity down the drain. 

Finally, we arrived at school.