Annam Manthiram
Find It, Do It, Share It Contest

I’d like to have a baby.  What do you think?

Those aren’t necessarily words that you want to hear on an outing with your Little Sister.  I was maybe a few months into the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program in Los Angeles.  I had been assigned to Nadia, a fifteen year-old who had been passed around in the program and in life like an unwanted hand-me-down. 

A lot of girls in my school are having babies.  Why?

My parents had never openly talked with me about sex.  I was raised in an ultra-conservative Indian household.  To be faced with a possible discussion about pregnancy over pizza at the mall was scary – and nothing that my years of volunteering with disturbed children had prepared me for.

Babies are cute.  I’d like to have one.  I dunno know when.

I realized that I had to say something.  As parents, teachers and friends, we don’t realize how much of an influence what we do or say has on an impressionable mind.  My 13-year old nephew still remembers the books that I used to tell him to read once he became older.  He surprises me every now and then when he’s read one, and he talks to me about it.  By now, I have completely forgotten that list, but it is forever ingrained in him.  But it’s never the list; it’s the kindness and care that someone took to provide that list.

I told Nadia that she could have a baby right then if she wanted.  What was she waiting for?  She hesitated – she was unsure of herself.  This wasn’t the reaction that she had been expecting.  Perhaps she had expected a lecture?  Ever wonder why we have two ears and only one mouth?  Big Brothers, Big Sisters teaches you how to listen.  How to really listen, and not with your mouth.  With your heart.

I don’t know if I want to have a baby right now. 

I told her a story about a friend I knew who had become pregnant in school.  The baby was cute as a little bunny, I told her, but she wasn’t able to continue with school.  She had wanted to go to college.  Nadia looked at me with hope in her eyes, wanting me to tell her that you can have a baby in high school AND go to college.  It may be possible, but I told her it was hard.  My particular friend did not make it, and she wasn’t alone.  This was all I said to her that day in the mall.  I chewed on the cheese on my pizza; she on her pepperoni.  We sat eating in silence.  She was thinking.

Yeah, you’re right.  I don’t want a baby right now.  I want to go to college.  What do you think of that top that girl is wearing?

I turned to look, and she never got to see the huge grin – the size of India – that was smeared across my face.