Other Peoples Children

8/15/2006
Other Peoples Children

I don’t remember disliking babysitting as much as I do now.

Well it may have something to do with the fact that I am babysitting unwillingly from the extreme discomfort of my desk at work. Now, please don’t get me wrong- other people’s children are lovely, as long as I can give them back at the end of the day. This one in particular is a sweet kid, I have written about him before because he is precocious and funny sometimes. This morning in particular he was bold in his first comment to me.

As he walked down the hallway in front of my office after a brief wave hello through the sliding window to my desk I looked up with a cheerful smile as he said “um Jenni what’s up with the dark circles under your eyes?” My smile wilted abruptly with early morning irritability the second my boss laughed at him.

It’s her kid you see, and I believe she is using him as a torture device to drive me insane. She thinks it’s funny; she must since she brings him in at least twice a week and discards him onto me.

“Isn’t there a school or a prison somewhere that is missing you today?” I ask him as he plopped his backpack to the floor and took the seat in front of my desk.
“Seriously is that makeup or something because it’s really really dark under your eyes”

“Where is your mother...” I whispered in my best cynical sigh

I decided to ignore him, maybe he would go away. I suddenly had a new appreciation for my dog because he can't talk.

His mother, apparently assuming that every time she brings him in with her I will be his nanny, was now sitting comfortably in silence in her office down the hall. I pretended to ignore him but he wouldn’t let me. Kids need attention, but this one has to have a permanent spotlight on him at all times.

I had zoned out at one point, but after about an hour of hearing his voice buzzing in my ear about who knows what I decided to listen in to his blabbering. Is he still here? He had been talking for almost an hour about how awful I look today. Gah! What the heck happened to child care, why isn’t he in school, and why does he choose me to annoy today?

So what if I had been up since 4am on the toilet taking a much needed 5-day-old poop and just never fell back asleep? So what if I decided to go sans concealer this morning because I had been too lazy because of said 4am pooping. So what if I have perpetual dark circles under my makeup and frizzy hair that just won’t stay in my ponytail and decides to stick straight out instead? I’m pretty dammit! And I’m at friggin work- who cares? No one sees me all day unless they have stumbled into the wrong building anyway. And who are you- a 7 year old with no manners- to make me feel like crap this early in the morning anyway? Why am I arguing with a fetus anyway?

I decided to keep all that to myself however because you know what a 7yr old can do with that type of information, especially when you include the word poop and a raised voice. I realized he didn’t know any better, apparently because his mother won’t pay attention to him long enough to teach him any manners. And who also laughs at his bad behavior instead of correcting him.

Instead, I smiled extremely pessimistically at him in a very Jenni way and got up out of my desk straining to remain calm

“Here...”I said as his backpack was politely but forcefully handed back to him. “...let me help you put this back on for your trip down the hall”
“Wait, where are we going?” he whined

I pointed to his mother’s office and said “go find your mom and tell her this is why Jenni doesn’t have children!”

Okay I didn’t really tell him that, but I thought about it heavily as I watched him drag his feet down the hall to his mother’s office. I heard the familiar sound of a pint sized backpack falling to the floor, and a mumble of one sided conversation.

At one point I heard a miniature running noise and then “oh no look, my pants fell down!”

She took him home soon thereafter.

-Jenni