Ankle Biters (Short Story)

Ankle Biters

Children are the most disgusting and obnoxious creatures on the planet.  The six dollars I make an hour babysitting is not worth the number of times I have been bitten, licked, kicked, scratched, and slapped by these “people” half my size.  Being a babysitter is the most stressful and underappreciated job (and it really is a full time production) that I have had in my entire life. 

However, one day, everything changed.  It started out just as painfully as any other babysitting gig.  I looked at the two children I was going to babysit for the day.  The big one had a dumb look on its face, with its mouth open, looking like it was about to speak at any moment.  I’ll call that one “Mouth Breather”.  It earned the nickname from the horrible slurping wheezes it made while breathing.  The smaller child was looking down, nervously, obviously never separated from its parents for long.  

“Can it speak?” I asked.  Neither child attempted to say a word.  I knew that this was going to be a long day…

Finally, after arriving in the park, I could finally take a break to not smell the roses.  The grass was a yellowish puke green from lack of maintenance, and the sidewalk was the perfect dirty shade of brown that screamed, “Tetanus shot needed!” I rummaged through my backpack, filled with diapers, hard candy, baby powder, and a few cans of gourmet chicken and turkey select cat food in case the kids got hungry.  I took out my two child leashes and harnessed the two kicking and screaming brats to a tree vandalized with a few obscene graffiti images.  Out of everything in my babysitting arsenal, the child leash is my favorite because it constrains them to a limited area, yet gives them enough room to exercise and run around, just like they would in the wild. 

Taking care of these kids was already starting to stress me out. 

“Okay kiddos, today we are going to use the buddy system.  You watch you, and you watch you.” I’m not quite sure if they could understand me, or even if they were old enough they to form sentences yet.

With my afternoon chores busy, I had plenty of leisure time to spend in my favorite café across the street, sipping my mocha.  I really deserved that break.   

By the time I got back, three hours later, to the two kids, they were lying in the grass under the shade of the tree, panting.  I hollered “Hey!” at them, but they didn’t respond, even when I came running.  I grabbed the little one by the collar and picked it up. 

It growled.

“What are you doing to my Chihuahua!?” yelped the lady resting on the park bench a few meters away.  I looked down at what I thought were the two children I was supposed to be babysitting, to see two miniature dogs, both head to toe in designer clothes.

Out of my entire babysitting career, I had never lost two kids.  Well, actually I had, but never both at once.  If the parents’ two children were kidnapped due to my negligence, they might fire me- or at least cut my hourly rate.  Sometimes it takes the parents years to produce another child.  I could not afford to take that kind of loss in my clientele. 

I looked at the ground below to see faint stubby little footprints starting from under the tree that the kids were at only a few short hours ago.  I followed the trail throughout the park until I reached the park’s playground, infested with youth.  I should have known the kids would be here- children prefer to travel in packs for protection.  The sound of little people trampling about and screaming into each other’s faces literally made me gag on my otherwise delicious dark chocolate mocha.

I spotted the runaways at the top of the playhouse.  Using a spare leash, I lassoed the two kids by the waists and pulled them down the cheap plastic yellow slide that led down from the playhouse.  Dragging them through the park like the dogs that I thought they were only minutes ago, I heard Mouth Breather’s wheezing turn into a sort of out-of-breath sobbing.

It cried to me, “Where are you taking us?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I sneered back.  I wasn’t just furious with the kids- I was disappointed.  If two pre-adolescent children couldn’t even babysit themselves for a few hours, then how could anyone expect me to?  Do parents expect me to watch their kids 24/7?  Maybe if I would have known that they were going to try to escape, I could have brought the electric dog collar that I used to potty train my nephew.

When I first became a babysitter, I just wanted to not have a real job, not get married, and never have kids- the American dream.  Cut to me wasting the worst years of my life teaching toddlers how to not pee all over themselves!