BABYSITTING "TAILS"!

Sometime when the girls hit Junior High they started babysitting. I will try to recapture some of these tales or I mean "TAILS". They usually babysat children that they knew or closer by our home.

This one particular time one of our daughters was babysitting and they had a baby and a younger child. It was a two story home and the changing table was upstairs. One of the instructions was that she was not to let the dog out of the house under any circumstance. Well, the baby needed changing and while she was changing the baby upstairs, the older child went down and let the dog out of the house. Now she was frantic wondering what she should do about the dog. She called me up since we were close by and thought I might have a solution. I told her that her first responsibility was to take care of the children and by no means go out looking for the dog. I proceeded to go over to look for the dog. I found the dog, but don't know whether there was any damage done by the dog getting out of the house.

On another occasion, the same daughter was to "CAT SIT" a neighbors pet. She was to make sure the cat had plenty of food and water. The first morning she went over, she couldn't find the cat anywhere. She called me and asked me why she couldn't find the cat. I told her that perhaps its under a bed or hiding. I went over to help her find the cat. THAT CAT WAS NO WHERE TO BE FOUND!!!! IT JUST PLAIN DISAPPEARED! A few days later the cat was back at their doorstep wanting to be fed. Somewhere in the process, communication was lost and they forgot to let her know the cat was outside.

Another occasion, I was being helpful to my neighbor back of us and was taking care of their canary while they were on vacation. I was to feed the canary and see that it had water and change the paper in the cage when soiled. They were gone a week or two and each day I checked out the bird. The day they were to come back I had gone over early on Sunday morning and fed the bird, etc. All was well. My husband said in the afternoon, "I think I will check on the bird just before they arrive home". He came back and said, "You won't believe this! The canary is dead!" Whoa! I couldn't believe it! Now what was I going to do? I offered to buy them a replacement canary. They said that they knew the canary was not acting right before they left, but just didn't mention it. I felt so bad. Moral to this--Don't ask me to take care of a pet, unless you want it to die.

One more story--

Our older daughter was in early High School and she babysat at this home. This was referral from someone. The wife had a parent that was quite ill and she went to the hospital to check on her parent. The husband left for someplace else. A few hours went by, and then the husband showed up at the home. My older daughter was thinking that he would drive her home, since he was back home. They sat in the living room together, she was knitting and he was reading the paper, etc. Each time she mentioned about him driving her home, he threw her a dollar. After a few dollars, she said, "Well if you aren't driving me home I will call my parents up to come and get me." She didn't see any reason why they needed her, when the husband was there to take care of the children. She did call me, and he got on the line and said he would bring her home. I didn't have any time to think this through before he hung up. He did as he said and she came in rather upset. I questioned her about what had happened. I had asked her if he had been drinking. To this she replied, "How would I know?" I told her that she could smell the liquor on his breath. She then said, "What does it smell like?" I realized we had sheltered her quite a bit down through the years with that question. He actually was trying to keep her there because his intentions were to go out later yet that night. He knew his wife probably was going to stay at the hospital due to the condition of her parent.

Wisdom--Children that are babysitting age still needs a backup when they are babysitting. They also need to check the locks on the outside doors to the premises, etc. We aren't living in Kansas no longer. Stay tuned--I have another tale to tell!