Babysitting FAQs

Judging by reader comments, I now realize that in the historically disastrous babysitting story I shared with you all on Monday, I left a few gaping holes.

*  If you intended to read that post but didn’t, then here.

*  If you did not intend to read that post but want to pretend you did, then here and scroll to where I wrote I WAS IN THE WRONG HOUSE.  Or just read that sentence.

*  If you don’t know a lick about what I’m referring to, have recently embroidered Children are Precious Gifts from God onto a throw pillow, and believed this to be a blog on helpful babysitting tips, please leave and never come back here again because I have nothing to offer you.

Well, my friends, I’m sorry to inform you that the ending to the story was not nearly as interesting as the in-between.

But in an effort to appease my readers, who undoubtedly haven’t slept a wink since I unearthed this horrific tale, I’ve put together a list of FAQs based on reader comments.  I will try my best to answer them in the thorough, thoughtful, bratass manner that’d make 1989-Angie proud.

Babysitting FAQs

What did Carol say when you arrived at her house?  Carol was not at her house when we arrived but was instead driving around town looking for me.  So I sat in her driveway in a pick-up truck with the nice, sweaty man and his 10-year-old daughter, and we tried to do small talk about everything except that a stranger just walked in off the street and babysat a person’s children without parental permission or awareness.

Carol then arrived at her house with her two daughters in tow, apologized profusely for our “crossed wires” and zoomed off to her hot date.  I recall little else except that I let her kids eat directly out of a peanut butter jar instead of going to bed and made her youngest sit in wet pants for the night so I wouldn’t have to change her diaper.  Needless to say, I was never asked back.

Did someone pay you for your time?  Carol might’ve paid me.  Or I might’ve just said, “Hey, you don’t have to pay me.  What if we say this whole night never happened?  Here’s a stick of Juicy Fruit gum for your trouble.”

Is this your entry in Darla’s most-embarrassing-story-from-your-childhood-ever contest?  Yes.  Details to follow.

Did you ever see that family again?  Yes.  Every year on the anniversary of the night of our Big Misunderstanding, we reunited on Oprah’s talk show to recount what happened and how much our lives have changed since then.  Actually, I never saw any of them again.  Except for the 10-year-old who I’d bump into on occasion in school and pretend to have never met in my life.

Ooh!  Elizabeth Shue!  Wasn’t she great in Cocktail?  No.

Is there anything else you would like to say about this experience that no one asked you and that you would like to ask yourself in an FAQ format?  Just that I felt I really missed the boat there.  The nice, sweaty man was obviously a single dad and Carol was obviously a single mom.  I had a unique opportunity to play Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap, and I failed.

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Survey says!

People who liked Adventures in Babysitting the Wrong Hellions also liked (1) Ex-Lax Poop March, (2) Cat Scratch Fiasco, (3) Lederhosen Nightmare and (4) Electric Fence Zap Mishap.

These four wonderfully awful stories of youthful humiliation, including the one from yours truly,  are up for a vote here at the blog She’s A Maineiac.  Please pay my fellow contestants the gift of sympathy and a vote or two would be nice as well.   Polling closes on Monday.

The contest winner will get a Maine gift box, to include a red lobster-shaped lollipop identical to the one I’ve wanted nearly all of my life since I first saw one on Darla’s blog last week.