Babysitters

I have always taken great pride in hand selecting babysitters that will get to be a part of my private world at home. Being a teacher in high school, you would think that I could just snap my fingers and potential candidates would magically fall into place. But I am picky....I like sitters who are creative and will actually pay attention to my kids. And trust me, this kind of person is really hard to find! This year I have been blessed to have about 5 babysitters that I can rotate through given the activity and needs of my kids.

Adam and Brittin are a young adult couple that I have met through my teaching at WMU. They babysit regularly; sometimes together and sometimes alone. My kids love them! It is nice to call on one for a job and the usual reply will be: "If I can't do it my girlfriend/boyfriend can". I have it great right now!

Although my babysitters are usually fabulous, they obviously don't value material things in general. The cars they drive are somewhat dated and tend to make lots of noise moving down the street in our quiet and preppy neighborhood. They are usually the oldest car in the neighborhood. In fact, I always tell them to park on the street because their "cool" cars are usually guilty of leaking oil in my clean driveway! This rule is always made very clear on the very first visit. Now to the truthful part.

I really do tell them to park on the street because of the oil but secretly I am saying, "DO NOT PARK IN THE DRIVEWAY BECAUSE I HAVE A HISTORY OF HITTING BABYSITTER'S CARS". I figure that if I shared this tidbit out loud to them, I would have no babysitters that would be willing to come back for a second visit....ever! When the sitter shows up, I get extremely focused on leaving and I start thinking about what is ahead of me whether it is dinner, a date, a concert, a show, a shopping trip, etc. I think so much about things that I back up, in a hurry, because I am focused on getting to my "place" and BAM, I hit a car. Each time I have done this....yes, EACH time would be three times, I don't do much damage and they don't care because their cars are junk. So, I have been really lucky....I guess?

Well tonight, I hit my fourth babysitter's car--Brittin's 2004 Volkswagon Jetta. No big deal, right?! It was just a minor ding and the front bumper was plastic and easily popped back into place. Shwew! After I hit the car, an almost surreal and totally bizarre event started to play out right in front of me. When I hit the bumper of her car, I watched her car "jump" out of park and start rolling down my driveway. Of course my driveway is on a bit of a decline so the car just kept rolling out into the street, onto and over the curb and finally came to rest as it made solid contact with a small tree. The tree was in my neighbor's yard and was just planted last year by the city. It was so pitiful looking, leaning sadly over from the weight of the white Jetta. What a sight! Actually the real sight was when I threw my car into park, jumped out and started running after her car! I guess I thought I could catch it or something? I forgot to put on my magic superhero cape so things didn't work out as well as I envisioned. I really wanted to take a picture of all of this so the cyber world (Okay, maybe just 3 of you) would believe me, but I also wanted to run back into the house, get Brittin's keys and get that car out of the neighbor's front yard and tree before I was "discovered" and humiliated even further. I chose the running back into the house option....it seemed more logical in the heat of the moment.

Anyway, I don't think that this accident is going to go away without a little deductible action. That Jetta is just too new and too foreign! It has been a sad driving day but it was simply an accident....that was all my fault. Thank goodness the car came to rest on the tree and not a house or a person. So I guess that I can call it a successful accident. Pitiful, aren't I?