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Although he's now a married movie star with two lovely little girls, once upon a time, Ben Affleck was a normal teenager who was terrified of buying condoms.

“I was so scared,” said an 18-year-old Ben in a 1990 teen sex guide called Risky Times: How to be AIDS Smart and Stay Healthy. “I wondered: ‘Are they going to call my mom?’ I went into the store, walked up to the shelf and grabbed the box. I didn’t stand there looking too long. There were two registers. A man was at one, a woman at another. Of course, the woman’s register came up first. I felt so self-conscious and idiotic, but it was all over in a second. I put them down and she looked at me with this stoic face and rang them up and put them in a bag, and I ran out of that store really fast!”

But the nervous little Ben who lent his experience to the writer (who happened to be best pal Matt Damon's stepmom at the time) grew up to be a playboy who dated Hollywood starlets Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez before settling down with Jennifer Garner.

Yesterday Ben looked excited to be returning home to his adorable girls, Garner, Violet 6, and Seraphina, 3.