Spirit Week (22)

and an honest living

Our school band teacher asked all of the students to buy a shirt that had our school mascot on it and our school colors for $15, and we were told that purchasing and wearing the shirt was mandatory. This all sounded fun in theory, but I didn’t have any money and my shoplifting days were over. So, I called my mother at work after school and asked if she could leave the money for the shirt on the counter the next time she was in, and she told me no and told me that it was time for me to get a job of my own. I asked her what I was supposed to do, and she told me to look for a babysitting job and figure it out.

How does someone with zero job experience get their first job? I certainly had no idea, so I went down to the property management office where I knew there was always an adult and asked them. The Internet wasn’t a thing, really, so finding out things was a hunt. You had to be very creative and walk around and ask people for their institutional knowledge, or you had to head to the library. When my grandparents tell stories of their hardships, they mention walking for miles, my mother talks about war, and I will bitch about not having access to information at my fingertips any time I damn well feel like it.

The lady at the front desk pointed me to the community flyer board and told me that sometimes people post odd jobs there, and maybe I’d find something. Bingo! I struck gold. A flyer with a section at the bottom where you tear off a phone number said: Looking for a sitter for our bundle of fun Zack, who’s five years old every Friday night. $3.00/hr. It also included a smiling photo of Zack. The kid looked familiar.

$3.00?!! I was going to be rolling in dough. I tore the flyer off the wall, shoved it in my pocket, thinking that maybe nobody else would call if I took the whole thing with me. I ran home excited and called, but had to leave a message on their answering machine. My children will never know what an answering machine is, which I find funny. We had a dedicated device for messages left on cassette tapes, and now we have Siri, Alexa, and Zoom!

With nothing else left to do, I walked around the neighborhood looking for my friends. We didn’t have “share my location” or cell phones, so we had to find each by somehow figuring out how to be in similar locations at predictable times of the day. So, for most of us, it was the area where you bomb the hill on your skateboard. That’s where I’d find Eddy, Spoon, and Ramont.

I hung out with my friends for a while when I saw my goose egg, Zack, cross the hill near us. What’s the harm in following the kid home and introducing myself in person? That’ll show them that I want it.

“Hey guys, I gotta run”.

”Where to”?

“To get a job.”

They laughed, not knowing what the hell I was talking about, but I couldn’t wait because the moment in front of me was almost over. Zack was almost in an adult’s arms and soon to be out of my sight. I rolled down the hill, jumped the curb near him, and came to a grinding halt safely off to his side, and jumped off, kicking my board up in my hands. Zack looked impressed. This was good. Stay impressed, Zack. I put on all of my church charms. If you want to get anything done with adults, you act like you are supposed to in church. Gets the job done every time.

“Hello, ma’am! Did you post a flyer looking for a babysitter for Zack”?

“Uhh, yeah! Huh. Yeah. I did,”!

“Well, I’m the one for you. I left you a message on your machine. Did you get it”?

“Oh, not yet; I just got home with Zack now. Want to come in”?

Ah hah! They lived in a unit, only two buildings over from mine. The commute would be super easy.

I came in and discovered that they didn’t just have one child, but two. They also had a 3-month-old baby. She asked me if I had any experience watching children and thinking quickly on my feet; I told her about changing my brother’s diapers and singing his songs to sleep. Granted, I was never left alone with my brother, but I had some sort of experience. She could trust me.

So, she asked on the spot if I could start that Friday. I didn’t hesitate, which means I also didn’t think that I was now going to be watching two children. I was too naive to realize that it was a dirty rotten trick.

I ran out and told the guys about my new job. I expected more excitement from them.

“Uhh, ok, whatever.”

Whatever? I had a job. I was going to have a predictable income.

That Friday, after school, I bolted home. I paced around my house until 5:55 because my shift started at 6 pm, and I wanted to be on time. I knocked on the door, and Zack's father opened it with excitement. Zack looked me up and down and just shook his head. He had a Robert Smith goth clown for a babysitter. Huge white clown shoes and all. 

“The sitter’s here. Let’s go”.

His wife emerged from the bedroom carrying the baby, and she placed the baby in my arms, then she spoke to me quickly while putting her scarf, hat, socks, and boots on.

“The bottles are in the fridge. Zack hasn’t had food yet. He needs to eat. He’s easy; just feed him something. The baby needs to go to bed now. Zack needs to have a bath and then go to bed. Oh, make sure you bungee the door shut on Zack’s room after you tuck him in. Oh yes, the baby sleeps in the living room. Feel free to watch tv, read a book or sleep on the couch until we get home after they are asleep”.

“Uhh. Ok, gotcha. Well, you two have fun. Stay out as long as you like,” which was code for, “I need every dollar I can get.”

She looked at me, worried. She should look worried. I had no idea what I was doing.

“The last thing. Do not let Zack have any toilet paper, you understand? He has to ask for it. Do not give it to him under any circumstance”.

“Got it, no toilet paper.”

I walked the parents towards the door, hoping they would leave to get these kids to bed and watch some tv or call my friends.

Once gone, I locked the door and set the chain latch and grinned.

My brother drank his bottles warm, so I put a pot of water on the stove to warm up, and set out a bottle. Man, I felt like a pro. I had this kid stuff down. I also knew how to change diapers, and this baby had Pampers. That was heaven compared to the cloth diapers my brother wore, so all I had to do was take them off and toss them. I didn’t have to see a pail filled with poopy Clorox water.

They told me to feed Zack anything, so I took that literally.

“Zack, come get something from the fridge and eat it.” “

“Like what”?

“Anything Zack. You heard your parents. Anything”.

Zack looked at me, amazed. Best sitter ever. He walked over and grabbed the can of whipped cream from the door and walked over to the table and awkwardly held it up to his mouth and squirted it in his mouth and all over his face”.

I scrambled and found a plate.

“No, Zack. Here. on the plate”.

Zack then squirted it all over the plate and the table and the chair and…

Crying.

The baby!

I ran over, and the bottle in the water was too hot. I paced around with the baby who’s crying became screaming. So, I stuck my finger in its mouth, which did the trick. The baby started sucking my finger for maybe two minutes and then screams. Perhaps I needed to change its diaper? I placed the baby down on the floor and checked the diaper. Well, the baby was a boy. Up until this point, it was just “baby.” My surprise in the diaper was a stream of urine straight to my face. I quickly covered the stream back with the diaper, which caused the urine to blast out the sides of the diaper and all over the baby’s belly. Urine everywhere, I darted around looking for a diaper. Why didn’t I prepare for this?

I looked up to see Zack drawing with the whipped cream all over the table.

“Zack, no”!

He gave me a “seriously, what are you going to do about it” face. He was right. Nothing. So, he went about wiping whipped cream everywhere.

“Zack, watch your brother.”

“mmmm… mmmm, k”.

I ran around looking for a diaper, coming up empty. Nothing. So, I ran and grabbed a towel, wiped down the baby, and placed it in its crib, still screaming like it was being murdered. I could no longer think the screams were so horrifying.

“Zack, what do I do”?

Zack just stared at me.

“I need to go poop.”

I stared at Zack, who wasn’t being very helpful, “Well, go poop”!

Zack wandered off into the bathroom and shut the door.

With him safely in the bathroom and no longer making art, I could focus on the baby. I still couldn’t find a diaper. There wasn’t a chest or bag anywhere in sight. So, I grabbed the bottle and put the baby in my jacket and then on my lap. Once the baby had the bottle, the screaming turned into sucking and desperate swallowing noises. Peace. One child eating and one pooping.

I’ve got this.

The baby snoozed off while eating, so I took the baby to the crib and lay him down naked and cranked the thermostat up. Being warm at home helped me get to sleep, so it had to work for babies.

I then sat back on the couch and took a deep breath and turned on the tv. They didn’t have a remote, and instead, you had to change channels manually with a dial. I couldn’t make up my mind what to watch and got up and down to cycle through options. That was a bust, so I figured I’d call my friends until Zack got off the toilet.

Actually, why was Zack on the toilet for so long? How long does he need to poop?

“Zack, are you done”?!!!

"No, I’m still going poo-poo.”

Geesh. I called a few friends and left a few messages with parents. See, if you didn’t get a machine, you got a real live human who wrote down your message. Well, if you were lucky. Most parents just said anything to get you off the phone and hang up. Their reliability of message transfer was questionable. If I called Sarah, I told Rory I was someone else. A code name that Sarah and I came up with, so she would know it was me.

I gave up and hung up the phone, and that’s when I noticed a pool of water coming out of the hallway leading to the bathroom.

Zack!

I ran over to the bathroom and called out his name.

“I am going, poo-poo!”.

“Zack, open the door.”

“I can’t. I’m going poop.”

“What is all this water? Zack open the door”!

“I’m on the toilet and can’t walk. Going poop”.

Water kept coming out. There was no obvious way to open the door.

Flush.

More water coming out faster, and it was heading into every room.

Flush.

“ZACK. OPEN THE DAMN DOOR.”

He opened the door, pants down, and there was whipped cream all over his hair, face, all over his body, and all over the walls. Whipped cream on every surface and in the toilet bowl, it was filled with sogging wet toilet paper and one child-sized turd.

He ran back to the toilet and looked back at me with possessed looking eyes.

FLUSH.

Water overflowed from the toilet with pieces of toilet paper. Whoosh.

I grabbed Zack, pulled up his pants, and stuck him in his room. I noticed the bungee cord his mom mentioned, and I latched it onto the doorknob as she instructed. He had enough strength to open the door just far enough that it would then slam shut. He did this over and over, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Luckily the baby didn’t care and kept sleeping. Ok, the baby is fine. I’ve got this.

I ran over and called the maintenance number for our housing complex. Went to their machine. I left a message and told them it was an emergency. I found towels in a closet, so I placed them everywhere, hoping it would soak up the water. Towels weren’t enough, so grabbed sheets. There wasn’t any hope of soaking this all up. It was everywhere, and I was out of ways to clean anything up.

That’s when I started to panic.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. The door to Zack’s room stretched open two inches and then banged closed. “LET ME OUT! LET ME OUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTT”! The screaming became this inhuman sounding shriek that only comes out of children this age.

I caved and opened the door. Zack ran out, slipped and fell, and rolled in the wet towels and water. Now he was soaking wet, covered in toilet water and snot. His face was red, and his scalp was bright red shining under his white hair. The cute child I met before was a possessed monster.

I went through the cabinets in the kitchen and found some animal crackers, so I lured Zack back into his room and told him he could have the whole box if he got into bed. That quieted him down fast. I turned off the light, tucked him into bed with the “crackers,” and shut off the light. I then secured him in his jail for the night and vowed that it didn’t matter what he said; he wasn’t leaving that room for the rest of the night.

Eventually, both children were out and asleep, so I collapsed on the couch and fell asleep myself, waking up to the door, getting caught on the chain when their parents came home.

“Hello?! Hello?”

Groggy, I woke up forgetting where I was—had that all been a terrible dream? The room came into focus. Unfortunately, no. I looked at the door struggling to be opened, yanking on the chain.

“Uhh, just a moment.”

I wandered over to the door, let them in, and reached for my jacket. I figured I should run and never look back. They didn’t even have to pay me. Let’s just pretend none of it ever happened on both sides.

They both walked in at the same time, so I didn’t have the room to run. It didn’t take more than a second or two before they saw the state of the kitchen and the water coming from the hallway.

Mom ran over to the crib and looked at the baby, who was contently asleep but naked. She then looked at Zack’s door and back at me.

“You let him have toilet paper, didn’t you”?

I was furious. No, I didn’t. 

“I did not. He went into the bathroom, locked the door, and he got it somewhere, but not from me”.

The father handed me a $20 bill and patted me on the shoulders.

“Thank you; you can go home. See you next Friday,”?

“No, sir, I’m sorry - no way! This isn’t for me”.

His wife, still in shock, standing on the wet towels, eyes wide open, are the last image of that night as he shut the door behind me, head down with sadness that they had to find someone else to watch their hell children.

I looked down into my clumped fist and saw the crumpled up twenty dollar bill. There was a band shirt in my future and a whole lot of candy bars. I was victorious.