Babysitters

We live five hours away from our nearest relatives, so if the wife and I would like some alone time, or if our schedules don't mesh, we are forced to leave our precious offspring in the tenuous care of relative strangers. The restaurant business affords me access to a small group of giggly but somewhat responsible high school girls who have demonstrated sufficiently their abilities to remain calm under pressure, think on their feet, and perhaps most importantly, ask me for help when they are in over their heads. Although I don't know all the details of their personal lives, we do have a certain level of trust.

On one particular occasion, however, we needed a babysitter during school hours, when all of my tried and true girls were filling their heads with Euclidean geometry and debating whether or not to get pregnant before graduation. In a pinch, we decided to allow an untested twenty something employee of mine to fill in. She was not one of my better employees, but she had volunteered numerous times when the wife and kids would come in for dinner, and we were really in a bind.

She arrived during nap time, on her cell phone, in a very heated conversation with whom I presumed to be her carousing and controlling boyfriend. She payed absolutely no attention as I excused myself to get ready for work. In the shower, every drop of water slapped me in the face and cried, "No! Don't leave your kids with this insecure woman! The only thing lower than her I.Q. is her self esteem!". After thirty minutes of worst case scenario analysis, I returned to find the argument being cut short, the babysitter sensing that I might have some pertinent information to impart upon her before leaving for work.

I should have grabbed the kids and ran. Instead, as I explained the rituals and feeding habits of two small omnivores, I noticed for the first time the troll-like appearance of this vacuous doormat of a woman. Her eyes were a bit jaundiced and entirely too close together, like a double yolked egg. She had the upturned snout of a mulefoot sow. Her hair arose from dark roots and tried to escape at her shoulders where it had been bleached out of existence. Her skin was ailing and pock marked. Her breasts marked the first of three distinct rolls of squalid flesh beneath her shirt, each one protruding far beyond the one above it. Her lips were strangely loose and seemed to be beyond her control. When she spoke it was as if her voice was overdubbed, the sound not matching the shape of the mouth, and when she smoked it was as if she was trying to fellate her cigarette. She repulsed me terribly, probably because I sensed that my children would not be safe under her charge. But I had little choice now, and left for work as worried as I have ever been without seeing flashing blue lights in my rear view mirror.

When my wife arrived home, the kids were still breathing, with all extremities still attached. They were pre-toddlers back then, able to crawl and stand, but unable to walk and climb like the spider monkeys they have now become. The babysitter greeted my wife with a startling revelation in an entirely flippant, nonchalant, and eerily proud tone; "Ella flipped off the end table like three times!". What kind of idiot would admit this outright? Did she think we would find it amusing that she had allowed this to happen multiple times? Not to mention the fact that my daughter couldn't even climb up on the couch herself! The babysitter had actually ENABLED my precious little girl to endanger herself over and over again. Thankfully Ella was alright, and the babysitter was out of our house, forever.

The worst part of course was that I still had to work with this moron. In this day and age you need a litany of paperwork and documentation to fire someone unless they steal from you or stab a customer. Unfortunately, she never did either. I did learn my lesson, though, and her ugly visage was a constant reminder. Don't let anyone watch your kids that you don't thoroughly trust, and always trust your instincts above all.