Final Babysitting Haul
LARCHMONT VILLAGE
I call this the Final Babysitting Haul but truthfully, me and the kid never know when the last one will be. When I first started babysitting him, I acted as though each one by be the final visit. I wanted to be honest with the kid and it was true, each week, each day, I thought I’d be back on my feet and no longer a 31 year old babysitter. But once the kid and I formed a deep bond of self-loathing friendship, I knew I’d be picking up random babysitting shifts just to catch up with him the rest of my life.
This was the “last babysitting haul” of the spring, one of the final days of April. I picked him up from his new school, it was a public school in the neighborhood next to Larchmont Village. I had planned to take him out to lunch that day, I liked staying out of the house with him because it was easier for us to have conversations when we were away from technology like his video games and computer. He’s a gamer, coder and internet junkie with the attention span of a TikTok video. We’ve gotten into arguments about it before but I’m not his mother or father so I stop the train at any sort of discipline.
On this day, he was tired from school, so we went back to his house. He didn’t have the key to get in so he bangs on the front door and rings the doorbell in case his father is home. We don’t hear anyone immediately so we walk to the back of the house to see if that doors open. That’s when I notice the lemon tree. He shows me his blueberry and strawberry plant and tells me when they’re ready he’ll give me some.
His father arrives at the back door - annoyed, he heard the doorbell. He sternly tells the kid he‘s home, working from his bedroom. I greet him to let him know I’m there. As we walk into the living room, he tells me he got hired to do a 7 day, 21 show residency at Magic Castle, and is practicing his newest routine. He’s blind and somehow both a writer and a magician. I’ve never seen him perform but we talk about the process during the introductories each sit. He’s been talking to agents about getting his comic book made into a tv series. He heads back up the stairs.
I let the kid play video games for the first 3O minutes of my stay. It helps to calm him down after school. His father heads out to the gym and a dinner meeting and urges the kid to get outside. I suggest we jump on the trampoline out back and he gets excited at the thought. When I was younger I could play on the big trampoline in my backyard for hours but now that I’m older, every time I jump a little too high, a little pee involuntarily comes out and I can’t jump past 1O minutes.
Once we’re done jumping, I walk over to the lemon tree and the kid tells me I can take as many as I want. I tell him that’s perfect because I need more lemons for my morning witches brew - which is a tea and herb tea I make at home to help with my gut issues. The kid rips a lemon from the tree, takes a bite from it and chucks the skin onto the ground before taking a bite from it. I ask if that’s how you’re supposed to eat it. It’s a rhetorical question, I don’t know what else to say after what I’ve just witnessed. He assures me “yeah, why not?” At this point in my babysitting career I’m used to the absurdities that come from hanging out with a 12 year old boy. I’ve learned to just let the moment pass.
I pull two lemons from the tree and we go back inside. I take a seat on the couch and the kid picks up a random nerf gun laying on the ground and shouts at me ‘wanna play nerf guns?’ as he points the gun at my chest. I place my hand over my heart for protection and say sure. He runs to the corner of the room and picks up a gun for me to use. We decide we’ll make a game out, we pick different guns and see how many nerfs we can get into each hole of his nerf board. This keeps us both entertained for about 15 minutes. I look outside, it’s a beautiful day and I suggest we take the guns to the streets. In the driveway and neighboring street, we play duck and shoot with the nerf guns. I teach him about the power of a stance, how to hold the gun like you know how to shoot it, even when you have no skill.
This lasts for about 15 minutes. It’s starting to get dark now so I suggest we go inside and turn on a movie. After much debate, we agree to watch A Bug’s Life. Fifteen minutes into the movie I ask the kid if we should make bug movies our thing. He makes us egg and bacon sandwiches for dinner and after the movie we go upstairs to his bedroom. He yanks his laptop out from his desk and pulls up a website called “makeitmeme.com” where you enter a chat room, get given an image and rate every anonymous user’s ability to make it into a meme. I’m horrible at it and we both laugh at the fact. He yells at me that I’m bringing his rating down and I say ‘I told you I wasn’t gonna be good at this!’ It’s about 1O o’clock now and we should be winding down for bed. He tells me he’s flying to Colorado the next day to spend the summer with his grandmother in Colorado.
