I take care of two little girls for 5 hours every day. I brought up boys, so I figured I could handle a couple little girls 3 ½ and 1 ½, I think I may have mislead myself in thinking that girls could not be any more difficult than boys. I am beginning to learn girls are very strange little creatures and I was crazy to think kids are kids; little girls are very, very different, from little boys.The people I babysit for live off in the woods, I grew up in Detroit, where there are an occasionally squirrel or rat, but not too many varmints roaming around. When we first moved to the “country” we would all look in awe at the pretty deer off in the cornfields, now we know them for what they really are, car smashing, grill bashing monsters that jump in front of cars for the pure pleasure of having you go get yet another estimate for body damage. I really think they are conspiring with the car repair shops in the area. Needless to say, I am still not used to the creatures and bugs that live here. It took two years to finally fight the cricket noises and get a whole night’s sleep. I’m used to sounds of traffic, sirens and garbage trucks, but crickets caused me many sleepless hours when I first arrived in the country.
On a gorgeous summer afternoon, the older girl (let’s call her Annie) and I were outside enjoying the last of the warm weather when I heard an earth-shattering scream… I thought Annie had been shot. Seriously, I have never heard a scream like that. She wasn’t more than 10 feet away from me, and hunting season is still a month away, Annie bound off the swing like an Olympic athlete scaring me, scaring herself, and scaring all the little forest creatures that were playing nearby. There was no blood to be seen, she seemed to be in perfect working order, as she ran her little butt off to jump on me, still screaming (I had an ear ache for a week) I quickly assessed the situation and she didn’t seem to be in any pain. So screaming, “what’s wrong, what’s wrong” all I could get out of her was a finger pointing towards her swing set. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to investigate or not. By the sound of the scream, I might be in for some sort of fight. Slowly, very slowly, I walked, practically tip-toeing towards the object of her torment, and I saw nothing.
As we approached the swing set her grip became comparable to Hulk Hogan’s, leaving a bruise on my arm that stayed purple for a week. Her little heart was beating out of her chest as she pointed at the offending object. It was a stick, that is it a stick, stuck to the swing set, I couldn’t see anything else, until the stick started to move. Ughhhh, I wanted to scream myself, it took all of my power to remain calm in this very scary situation. The stick was moving, it had a little head and a bunch of little stick legs, and I was in fear for I had never seen anything like this in my life, except maybe on the discovery channel.
On a gorgeous summer afternoon, the older girl (let’s call her Annie) and I were outside enjoying the last of the warm weather when I heard an earth-shattering scream… I thought Annie had been shot. Seriously, I have never heard a scream like that. She wasn’t more than 10 feet away from me, and hunting season is still a month away, Annie bound off the swing like an Olympic athlete scaring me, scaring herself, and scaring all the little forest creatures that were playing nearby. There was no blood to be seen, she seemed to be in perfect working order, as she ran her little butt off to jump on me, still screaming (I had an ear ache for a week) I quickly assessed the situation and she didn’t seem to be in any pain. So screaming, “what’s wrong, what’s wrong” all I could get out of her was a finger pointing towards her swing set. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to investigate or not. By the sound of the scream, I might be in for some sort of fight. Slowly, very slowly, I walked, practically tip-toeing towards the object of her torment, and I saw nothing.
As we approached the swing set her grip became comparable to Hulk Hogan’s, leaving a bruise on my arm that stayed purple for a week. Her little heart was beating out of her chest as she pointed at the offending object. It was a stick, that is it a stick, stuck to the swing set, I couldn’t see anything else, until the stick started to move. Ughhhh, I wanted to scream myself, it took all of my power to remain calm in this very scary situation. The stick was moving, it had a little head and a bunch of little stick legs, and I was in fear for I had never seen anything like this in my life, except maybe on the discovery channel.
Once we deduced the stick wasn’t going to harm us in anyway, Annie became the explorer, inching closer and closer to this weird bug. I wanted to hang back, but curiosity got the best of me too. Well a long story short, we named him Mike, and after playing with Mike for a while he seemed to slow down quite a bit. Oh, no, I thought we killed him. Annie is quite the animal lover and if Mike died now, I’d never hear the end of it. So, after getting Mike to walk on to another stick, I carried him off into the woods, so he could go visit his mommy and daddy.
For about a week after that, we had to check all around in the woods for Mike, keep in mind, he looked like a stick, so for the many little sticks there are in the woods, Annie would say, “here he is, look, look”, an equal amount of times, and then no, it was just a stick, it wasn’t Mike. I feel very silly searching the woods, full of sticks, trying to find a stick bug that at one time almost gave me a heart attack.
The good thing about babysitting little kids, is that I can act like a little kid, and no one is the wiser. I can search the woods for little stick bugs, and make sand castles all day long if I want to. Growing up in the city, all I ever knew about animals was what I saw on National Geographic, there are no stick bugs in Detroit, I’m pretty sure of that. So, I get paid, to investigate where little creatures come from and what berries are ok to eat and which ones aren’t. I don’t know, but Annie does, she tells me “that’s a mulberry silly”. I wonder, is this the stupid berry they sang a song about. Annie pops them in her mouth one after the other, her daddy taught her which ones were ok and which ones were not. All I know is, I still refuse to put anything in my mouth that did not come from a grocery store. If it hasn’t been processed and shrink wrapped I’m not going near it, I gotta draw the line somewhere. I am still a city girl at heart.
The good thing about babysitting little kids, is that I can act like a little kid, and no one is the wiser. I can search the woods for little stick bugs, and make sand castles all day long if I want to. Growing up in the city, all I ever knew about animals was what I saw on National Geographic, there are no stick bugs in Detroit, I’m pretty sure of that. So, I get paid, to investigate where little creatures come from and what berries are ok to eat and which ones aren’t. I don’t know, but Annie does, she tells me “that’s a mulberry silly”. I wonder, is this the stupid berry they sang a song about. Annie pops them in her mouth one after the other, her daddy taught her which ones were ok and which ones were not. All I know is, I still refuse to put anything in my mouth that did not come from a grocery store. If it hasn’t been processed and shrink wrapped I’m not going near it, I gotta draw the line somewhere. I am still a city girl at heart.
