Tigger9 : My True Story - Part 1 (f/f)

[Fordman]

My True Story part 1
By: Tigger9

Note: This story was recovered from the old site and edited for spelling and format to improve the reader’s experience.

I have a story about the last time I was put in a car seat and I thought I'd share it. Like most kids in the UK, I never used any baby equipment involving harnesses past the age of 3.5-4 years old and I never really thought about them as I got older. I did have a series of experiences when I was 8/9 years old and this first part is about the beginning of that; here's what happened.

First a bit of background. I am the youngest of six kids and as you might expect, I was always babied a bit more than my siblings as I grew up. Even now I'm definitely still the baby of the family. Talking to my parents and siblings over the years, I get the impression that I was kept in pushchairs, highchairs and car seats etc. slightly longer than the rest of them, but not by much.

We all used to get put in reins as toddlers and whereas the others came out of them by between 2 and 3 years old, I apparently wore them occasionally right up to before I started school at 4. I was never really naughty or prone to running off, although I have always had a short attention span; I think it was more the fact that when you are looking after three, four or five kids, it makes life easier to have some of them either in pushchairs or tied to you. Our family didn't really use wrist links; the thinking was that once we were old enough to walk without reins on, we would have enough road safety sense and good enough behavior not to need them.

This all happened when I was eight. My big brother's girlfriend (who I'll call S) had got used to playing with my nearest sister, who was ten, and I when she came over to see my brother. We really liked her, she was fun and let us get up to lots of naughty stuff (pillow fights, etc.). She said to us both a number of times that she wished she'd had little sisters to look after and that she thought she'd have been good at it. In some ways, she did start treating us like her younger sisters and not always in a good way - she would tell us off if we were naughty and followed through with threats to punish us (though never physically, of course).

Looking back, she was never unfair and really did look out for us. The first harness incident happened when she was asked to give a friend of hers a lift to a relatives' house about 140 miles away from where we lived, and the friend had an 18-month old baby. For whatever reason, the baby did not have a car seat so S had to borrow one from another friend and when she pulled up at our house the day before the trip, she had the seat installed in the back of her car.

As we often did, I opened the front door when I heard her arriving and ran out to say hello. As I did so, I saw the seat and opened the back door of the car to have a look at it. It was a toddler-size seat for kids up to the age of 4, but it looked bigger than I thought it would.

"Is that for the baby?" I asked.

"Yep, certainly is", said S.

"Isn't it a bit big for a baby?" I asked, picking up one of the straps to find that they extended out much further than I thought they would.

"No, you adjust the straps so that they fit, silly!"

"Oh."

"It can't have been that long since you were in a seat like this. Do you remember what it's like?" she asked. As she looked up, she saw me putting my hands all over the seat with burning curiosity.

"I don't think so."

"I think you'd probably even fit in this one", she said.

My ears pricked up. I guess she was probably expecting me to reject the idea, because who would want to go in a baby seat? As it was, I must have looked quite interested because her next question was "do you want to see if you can fit in?"

"Can I?" I asked excitedly.

"Of course you can", she answered, putting her hands around my waist to try to lift me up.

"No, I can get in by myself" I said, carefully pushing her hands away. I sat myself down in the seat which, at first impression, was very comfortable indeed. I was only wearing my cotton pajamas but it was a warm day, and the seat padding was slightly warmer than the inside of the car so it was like lying on a blanket.

"Do you want to be strapped in?" she asked to which I responded "yes please".

S started fumbling with the straps, which were an old fashioned design. Instead of having a tensioning strap at the crotch, each of the four main straps had a fold over tightener on them, like a big version of the adjusters on a webbing baby harness. Adjusting them to their maximum length, she pushed me forward slightly so that she could feed my arms into the shoulder straps and then rocked me back into the seat and pulled out the crotch strap. On trying to fasten the harness, we could both see that the straps were too short so I gave up and went to get out of the seat.

"No just a moment, the shoulder straps aren't at their highest setting. Jump out for a second and let me adjust them."

I clambered out and she swiftly set about moving the shoulder straps from the second holes down to the top ones. "Right," she said, "try again."

I sat back down in the seat and S expertly pulled the straps into position. The harness still looked tight to me, but she went to fasten the harness by pulling the left and right sides together and fastened the buckle with a loud click. It had worked and I was now strapped into a baby seat, which was a very strange feeling. The straps were tight but they didn't hurt or feel uncomfortable, and I instantly liked the feeling.

"Ha ha! Well I never thought I'd see that! An eight year old strapped into a baby's car seat!"

I didn't know whether to feel embarrassed or excited; it all felt a bit naughty because I knew I wasn't really supposed to be sat in a car seat like this.

"Oh just a second, we need to do this bit up as well" she said, feeding the crotch strap up into the central buckle. The strap was quite loose but I slid down in my seat slightly once she had fastened it and could feel it pressing slightly. It made the harness feel more complete and, as I had in the back of my head, more difficult to get out of.

"Do you want to go for a drive then?" asked S.

I didn't know what to say. I liked being in the seat and I quite liked the idea of playing baby for a while, but I thought about what would happen if we saw someone I knew while we were out. They'd see me in a baby seat and I'd be so embarrassed.

After thinking about it for a moment though, I realized that I didn't care that much so I said yes. S went around to the driver’s seat, climbed in and started the car. She drove us around the block a couple of times and I sat very still, just absorbing the feeling of being strapped into a seat like a toddler. I didn't understand at the time, but the feeling I had was that this harness did not require to cooperate or behave myself at all - it just pinned me down so that I couldn't move. Eventually S pulled back up in front of our house. She turned around in her seat.

"So what do you think then? Like it?" she asked.
"Yeah!" I said excitedly.

"Aww, you look so cute like that! I think all little kids of your age should go back in baby seats like this, you'll be much better behaved!" That was an odd idea.

"Okay then, let's go inside now so that you can start getting ready for bed.

"But I am ready for bed!" I said, pinching my pajamas which were being held against me by the harness straps.

"I mean brushing your teeth and things. Come on, let's go in. See if you can get yourself out of the straps."

I pushed the red button but found it was much stiffer than I thought, so I tried to use both of my index fingers to get more leverage. The button did move a little bit but not enough and I couldn't get the buckle to open.

"Do you need some help?" asked S, seeing the difficulty I was having. It was at that exact moment that I had my first feeling of being as helpless as a toddler, unable to get myself out of the baby seat.

"Yes", I said.

"Yes what?"

"Yes please!"

She brushed my hands out of the way and opened the harness with a simple fluid movement. I shrugged my way out of the harness and climbed down into the car foot well, then took another step onto the road.

"There," she said, "What did you think of that? Did you like it?" she asked.

"Yep!" I answered, still feeling as though I'd just done something naughty.

"Well maybe next time we go on a little trip somewhere, we can get you all strapped in again. Would you like that?"

"Yeah!"

The following weekend, S took my sister and I on a trip to a nearby town to do some fun things and true to her word, she let me ride there and back in the car seat. Apparently I fell asleep about two minutes after we set off that morning and they both said that I looked very sweet dozing in a car seat.

I don't remember falling asleep, but I do remember getting out of the car once we arrived. I woke up and we were in a car park. S and my sister weren't in the car and looking around (as much as I could with my shoulders strapped down), I couldn't see them. It turned out that they had gone to get a car park ticket and returned a couple of moments later. As I rubbed my eyes, I heard S talking to my sister.

"Could you let her out of her harness please, honey? She can't get it off by herself."

My sister came over to release me from the seat and I clambered out.

That's it for this part of my story. I did ride in the car seat a number of times over those few weeks before S had to return the seat to her friend. On one occasion, we went to somewhere quite far away for another day out and I spent six hours in total in the car seat. That was too long and I felt a bit cramped up after an hour and a half but in her pseudo-big sister role, S wouldn't let me get out until we stopped at services for a drink and then returned me to the seat before we set off again, telling me that I was much safer in a seat with a harness than I would be in a normal seatbelt without a booster. I'm not sure about that, but she wasn't offering me a choice.

The next part is about some experiences I had with other baby equipment when I was nine. I will post it up here as soon as I can.