The time that I became six months pregnant over night.

So, last night my boyfriend spent the night at my house, and today I was six months pregnant.
Just kidding.
Kind of. I mean, he did spend the night at my house, but for completely innocent and pure reasons, and today I did have to make myself look six months pregnant.
See, for my communications class our final project is to do this "frame of reference challenge" thing, where we had to do something completely out of our comfort zones that would force us to see things through someone's perspective whom we normally never would.
Considering my biggest fear is becoming pregnant,
-Okay I feel that I need to explain that statement in more length than would fit inside some parentheses before finishing this story. To be clear, there is absolutely no possible way that I could be pregnant. But for some reason I have this weird, irrational paranoia that somehow, someway it will just happen against my will. See, I hate children (with the exception of four of them in the whole world, and getting to the point of even accepting them as human beings took me about two years of them being forced upon me against my will). It's not just an intense dislike, it's more of a fear. I don't know how to explain it, it's just whenever a small child enters a thirty foot radius of me, my vision gets all blurry and I start squirming around in terror until I'm either writhing on the floor in the fetal position, or running away in total panic. Alright, so that first one has never actually happened, but the latter occurs quite frequently. Sometimes people who know me think it's funny to tell a little kid to come try to touch me. Which is basically the same thing as sicking a hippo on a helpless, newborn puppy with down-syndrome (I say "hippo" because google told me that they are the most dangerous mammal in the world...well, with the exception of human beings, and I wasn't gonna use that one because it didn't really make any sense, nor would it work with my analogy). What I'm saying is, it's pretty much the cruelest thing anyone could ever do to me.
To what age does this intense fear extend, you ask? I would say that I stop being afraid of them once they hit about eight years old...that's when it tends to morph from a fear into a raging annoyance. And then there are the infants...first of all, please don't get mad at me if you are around me when I refer to a baby as an "it." I don't mean to ignore the fact that they, too, are human beings...but my mind just refuses to view them as such until they can at least walk and talk. I'm pretty sure they don't terrify me quite as much as they simply gross me out. All they ever do is puke, poop, drool, and cry...I hate all those things. And then there are the people who think it's funny to try and force me to hold their infant...well, the jokes on them, because once that baby touches me, I'm incapable of moving whatsoever so the thing will most likely fall and die. I'm aware of how awful that sentence sounds, but if that's what it takes to make sure whoever reads this will never try to force a baby on me, then so be it.
So anyway, since this phobia of mine is pretty well known, a while ago my friends made this joke about how I would be the next "virgin Mary" and God would supernaturally impregnate me just for a funny gag. I think maybe that's when my fear of becoming pregnant started. Because it's not just the end result of pregnancy that scares me, but the nine, long months in which you are enduring the pregnancy symptoms appears to be the most intense type of hell on earth one could ever imagine. I mean, puking every morning, emotional roller coasters more intense than the Bizarro (a roller coaster in New England that was listed as one of the world's scariest coasters...it involves flying through a tunnel of FIRE), crying all the time, feeling like a beached whale, not being able to control your food cravings, and pretty much feeling like you're dying every single day just doesn't sound enjoyable to me. Not to mention the part where you are a freaking vessel carrying another life, meaning every tiny thing you do or eat could effect the outcome of the kid's existence. My mom said she ate a lot of Chinese food when she was pregnant with me, and now Chinese is my favorite kind of food. What if I'm so emotional and hung up on craving a certain food that I refuse to eat anything BUT that type of food the entire time I'm pregnant, and then that kid is destined to a life of being a picky eater for all of eternity? Or I trip and fall on my stomach (I'm outlandishly klutzy), and the kid comes out with a severe mental disability? The list of things you could do to screw up the little thing's whole entire life is basically endless. Now, add to all that the reaction that certain people would have to my becoming pregnant, which I might actually be more terrified of seeing than the pregnancy symptoms itself, and you've got my biggest fear in a nutshell.
And yes, logically I know that only I am in control of making pregnancy even a possibility, and that I know I never would, but for some reason I can't shake this unreasonable terror from my mind. Seriously, I have very realistic nightmares that involve me being abducted by scary people in white coats who stab me with giant needles containing the DNA of a baby and "scientifically" impregnate me. Once, I actually started crying in real life when I accidentally zoned out for too long and observed a scenario in which I became magically pregnant play out in my all too vivid imagination. I'm talking legit day terrors here, people.

Alright, now that you understand exactly what I mean by, "Considering my biggest fear is becoming pregnant," I will move on with the actual story.
So, I decided that forcing myself to experience pregnancy would push me the most out of my comfort zone, seeing how I'm not planning to undergo the real situation for a very, very, very long time.
So, I rolled up a bed sheet and wrapped it in saran wrap to make it all smooth and solid and then saran wrapped it to myself - it was quite the contraption - and headed off to the mall with Shawn, whom I brought along for some added dramatic interest. He got dirtier looks than I did.
It turned out to be a successful project, as I was able to witness first hand how judgmental people can be, what it's like to stand out like a pirate at a ninja convention, and how much perception can alter an assumption.
And what did I learn?
Being pregnant is even more of a hassle than I had originally anticipated. Seriously, it was exhausting trying to reach anything an inch out of my arm span, and trying to pick something up off the ground was just a joke. The only good part about it was that I had an excuse to wear sweats without looking like a hobo, and we got to park in the "expectant mothers" parking space.
For my summary paper, the last question I had to answer was, "Why would you recommend that other students do what you chose to do as a frame of reference challenge?"
I answered, "I would never recommend doing this. Not unless you want to feel like there's an alien growing out of you, or literally fall on your face while trying to tie your shoe, or waddle around like an awkward duck, or feel the glare of a thousand judgmental people burning through your soul, or overall just feel like you're trapped in the most terrible kind of horror movie."
...Just kidding, I didn't write that because I need a good grade. But, had I replaced my fear of failing this class with honesty, that's what I would have said.