The Worst Babysitting Job Ever

You can't prove it didn't happen this way

I was a bad babysitter.  I didn’t realize this at the time.   But there’s no way I would hire me.  No way.  At the time I thought I was good, I mean I must have been.  People would book me a month in advance.  I just looked the part of good babysitter.  I was shy, didn’t date, brought my homework with me and gave good reports about the kids when the parents got home – regardless of what happened while they were gone.  This was enough to keep me employed.  Employed so frequently and known so well among the other babysitters in town, that I had the power to blacklist a family.  “What’s the scoop on the ______ family?” another 8th grader would ask me.  “Don’t work for them,” I’d say. “They have nothing good to eat and there’s no TV.”

These requirements spoke to my only goals when babysitting, watching TV (my family had no cable) and eating stuff I wasn’t allowed to at home.  I was a snooper too.  I knew about the good Dr. R’s extensive pornography collection (seriously Mr. R, that was some kinky shit).  Mrs. K probably never had sex on account of her diaphragm case being dusty.   Mrs. M was on about nine antidepressants.  Mr. H was a cross dresser (oh, don’t think I didn’t see the polaroids).  And Miss W, the single mom, was dating a guy who had a van in which they’d have sex, because he lived with his mom.  I know all this because I read her diary. **

Once, because I got the days wrong, I picked up an 18 month old from daycare.  His mom hadn’t left his car seat because she hadn’t expected me to pick him up.  Instead of calling her and asking her if I had the day wrong, I just strapped the 18 month old into a regular seat belt in my car and drove him home.  What?  Yes.  Bad bad babysitter.

When reading a bedtime story, I would encourage a short one.  When the kids picked a long one, I’d skip pages.  SKIP PAGES.  I mean, was it that hard to read them the whole thing?  Apparently the lure of soda waiting for me in the fridge was so strong that I’d just give them an overview.  “Wait, how did Cinderella get to the ball?” they’d ask, because I’d skipped the whole godmother showing up.  “Oh it was a magic bus,” I’d say.  Or: “It’s not important.  Just pay attention, we only have a few more pages.”  Then the story would be over and they’d kind of sit there blinking, like really, that’s it? Then I’d go raid the bathroom for nail polish and paint my nails in front of the TV, taking breaks to read their novels for the dirty parts.

Once I even spilled nail polish remover all over what turned out to be a priceless family heirloom, and it ate through all the layers of varnish, and that family still didn’t fire me.

The strange thing was all the kids liked me.  Requested me even.  I can’t figure this out, though it’s probably because when I showed up they were allowed to eat pizza and watch movies.  This was authorized by the parents.  So it was more that the kids associated me with awesome stuff, not that I was actually awesome.  Because well, have you been reading this post?

What babysitting taught me or impressed upon me (especially babysitting in the half-assed way I did it) was that child rearing was easy.  You gave them some food and skipped your way through a story, changed a diaper or two and that was about it. So when it came time for me to make a conscious decision to have kids I thought I’d be a natural.  Only what I’ve come to realize is that motherhood is not at all like babysitting.  Or rather it’s like the worst babysitting job you’ve ever had.  Except the parents never come home. While babysitting should have taught me about childhood development and how to quell a tantrum and how to get a toddler to eat their dinner, all it actually taught me is that I should really hide my porn collection and put my diary somewhere other than the nightstand. 

** initials have been changed to protect the pervy