"Aunt Sharon, to do this transformation I need some old clothes of mine. And some new clothes too."
"What?" asked his aunt. "I don't get it."
His parents hadn't tried to interfere much so far, but finally his mother said, "Scott, I want you to tell us what you're planning. You're a teenager. You can't have a baby, even if the baby is just like you. You can't walk around as me. What are you going to do when you go back to school this fall? What are you going to tell people? So far we haven't said anything because there isn't anything you can do to make it worse, but you need to think about it."
"Mom, Dad, Aunt Sharon, the new clothes are to can change back to myself. The old clothes are... well, it's a little hard to explain."
"Go ahead," said his mother.
"The instructions say that when you change using the medallion, it changes your mind a little. Not a lot--I didn't get your memories--but enough to do things like walk in your new form and put on clothes and use the bathroom. So what happens if I use the medallion on the baby? Maybe I could make him older, old enough that I don't have to change diapers."
"I don't know about that," said Sharon. "As you said, the effect is limited. You can't make the baby your age and have him do your homework."
"No, but old enough to walk and put on clothes and use the bathroom would still help. It all depends on exactly what the medallion does."
"But you don't know that."
"I can find out. Make him some age and see if he can do what children do at that age, if not, then in 12 hours we make him younger. Mom, do you have anything of mine from when I was a kid?"
"You're not exactly a grownup," replied his mother, "but I think I do, and there may be something in that bag of rags, too."
Scott nodded, put on the medallion, and got up to go to his room. He needed to change himself back to Scott first, after all.
But he didn't watch where he was going. The slippers he had had on just a minute before the birth were lying on the floor, and he slipped and fell on them. That's why they're called slippers, he thought wryly. But then he realized that he had the medallion on. If it had touched those slippers....
