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The Babysitting Incident
My daughter is a responsible 12 year old who is in perpetual need of cash to support her Abercrombie and Hollister shopping habit. She needed a job, and quickly
before she had to wear the same outfit twice in one month. Even though it had given her nightmares about children choking on marbles, she'd passed the Red Cross Babysitting course
with flying colors. So this babysitting thing looked like it might fit the bill, and it was with sometimes wavering conviction, that we decided she was ready to earn a living. She did some
small-time gigs babysitting neighbor children for a few hours and did great. Now she's moved into the big time and I have second thoughts after what occurred the other night.
An acquaintance of mine asked if my daughter babysat and I really worked myself up into a lather giving my daughter a good verbal reference. Off she goes, actually 1 mile away, as I
reassure both parents and my daughter that I'll be home all evening with the phone not more than 2 feet away from me at all times.
I guess I jinxed it when I said that about the phone, because a half hour later I get The Call of
Distress. Is there a fire? Is someone bleeding? Did the child choke on a marble? I wonder as
I rush to the phone. "Mom, can you come over here right now? And no, there's no blood." She sounded pretty calm, too calm, tightly controlled calm. I jumped in the car and slammed
my finger in the door. Now there was blood.
The minute she opened the door I smelled it. You know that smell when you throw your plastic plate, plastic spoon, and plastic cup on the campfire? That was the smell. The
babysittee was safely out back on the swingset so I felt some relief. My daughter, with big tears in her eyes because she knew she had blown it, related the woeful tale. Since it was
dinner time, she was supposed to feed the child. The mom, trying to make it as easy as possible, had gotten some sort of TV dinner. I know what you're thinking – You write a
newsletter called Cookin' Kids, surely your own kids can cook? In a snappish, self-righteous kind of way my answer is – My kids know how to cook real food like Mac and Cheese, not
TV dinners! Wanting to figure it out herself without calling Mom, my daughter had bravely read the instructions, Heat at medium setting. What she didn't read was the word
MICROWAVE. She had put the MICROWAVE TV dinner on the stove top at medium heat and proceeded to melt the hard plastic onto the electric burner coils.
We opened all the windows and doors as I tried to pry off the melted gunk from the now-cooled burner. I did some quick mental calculations and figured it would cost me more to
replace the burner than what my daughter was going to earn this night. I was pretty sure she wasn't going to get a tip. It took me quite a while to chisel the stuff off with a flathead
screwdriver. Meanwhile, we stuffed ourselves with a delivery pizza.
This is the Babysitting Incident that has been banished from dinner table discussion and is not
allowed to be told to the relatives. I'm sure she learned a lot from this, like how she should have just asked the child. Turns out he already knew how to cook the TV dinner.
Peggy is the editor of the popular Cookin' Kids Newsletter. Interesting themes, fun facts, silly
clip art, easy recipes, kid jokes, cooking terms, and safety tips make this newsletter a hit with kids! Learn more about it at http://cookinkids.com
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