Once More with Feeling.: Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's a Mo-ron.

[Alternate title: "Adventures in Babysitting - As Taken from an Episode of 'COPS'"]

So I made reference in a meme not too long ago about my ability to find some brand of humor in just about any situation, this being a self-preservation tactic that I've finely tuned over the years. To illustrate my point, I casually dropped that I'd my car impounded while my boss's young son who I was babysitting was in the car. Many of you in the comments were like, "Whoa, wait a minute. Back that up...that is a story that needs a-telling."

Okay. Here you go.

(By the way, this cute, little episode I would brand and file under, "Only you, Jen. Only [expletive] you.")

To give some history, I had started off on the traditional college path, and when I was 19, a friend of my father's, Bernie, offered me a summer job at an insurance company as a mail/file clerk. I remembered him from 8th grade, our families hung out a few times, and liked him well enough. I came back the following summer working on something else, and by the Fall they had offered me a full time job and the company would also pay for my education on a part time basis. Win-win.

The deal with being 20 and not a college grad and them paying for your school and all that, is that you are still pretty much broke. Paying you less than $20K broke. I moved out of my mom's house around age 23-24 with my pay then just slightly north of the $20K, able to be on my own and pay bills....well, sort of. Okay, so I was not exactly, totally responsible with all of my finances. I mean, rent got paid, car loan got paid, insurance - things of that nature where there was no wiggle room. However, things like credit cards, and parking tickets and uh, town taxes....you see where this is headed.

I had A LOT of parking tickets. That was because I didn't have the money to buy a sixty dollar monthly pass (tho somehow always had funds for beer on Friday and Saturday nights...hmmm, tricky how that math works out). I collected these things - I could have made a mural out of them. Anyway the "fun" and "interesting" thing about parking tickets, as you may or may not know, is that they double, triple, and then max out with a additional fee if you don't pay them right away. And people, that shit adds up.

December 1996ish- I'm 23, the night before the office Christmas party. Bernie had asked me to babysit his younger son, Dillon, who was about 8 at the time. His son had hockey practice up in Enfield and he was going to be able to watch some of the practice, but would have to leave to make his plans with his wife to see Lord of the Dance. My instructions were to hang around practice and drive him back home, get him fed and to bed by 9:00 and once his high school aged brother got home, I could jet. Easy enough. Around 7:00 Dill and I left the rink, loaded his huge hockey bag and stick into my car and headed down a 2-lane road towards the highway.

I never even made it to the highway before I saw the blue flashing lights. I was being pulled over with my boss's son in my car. Fantastic. I knew I hadn't been speeding or driving unsafely, which only meant I was in much worse trouble. My stomach tightened around my heart that had dropped in there.

A woman officer approached my window and asked me the same lame question they always ask: "Any idea why I pulled you over?"

"Well, I wasn't speeding...was I?"

"No, you weren't. License and registration please?"

"Uh, okay."

It's probably a good time in the story to tell you that I knew my registration had expired by a few months. Yeah, this is what we call "Not Good".

I handed her my license and (expired) registration slip. She looked at it, handed it back and asked for the non-existent "new one". By that point, I was totally committed to "Operation: Dumbo" and innocently reacted, "it's expired? really? I had no idea."

Officer Lady sentenced me right then and there: "I can't let you drive this car." I explained/begged to/of her to PLEASE, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, I HAVE BOSS MAN'S BABY IN THE CAR. HE LIVES IN WALLINGFORD! I NEED TO GET HIM HOME! I'LL TAKE CARE OF ALL THIS TOMORROW. PLEASE LET ME OFF.

Yeah, she really didn't give a shit. Also, this was 1996. Cellphones were not quite that common yet. And Miss Moneybags that I was, I sure as heck didn't own one.

Also an interesting note, during all of this, another 3 other coppers decide to pull over to see what's going on. Apparently I was "news" in Enfield that day. Another officer walked up to my window, this time a man, and I again explained my situation, bascially that I was in a huge pile of shit trouble as I nodded over to the kid in the front seat and that I could take care of this tomorrow (total lie) if he would just cut me a break. Unlike the woman officer, he seemed at least a little empathetic to my plight, "sorry, I'd like to help you out, but she's already written this up." Eventually we were requested to leave my vehicle and asked where he could take us to call for a ride home.

To add to my anxiety, I was almost an hour away from this kid's home. No car, no cell, no friends in ENFIELD to speak of, and I needed a 2 car swing so I could stay with the kid and then drive back home (i.e. calling my mom and having her hang out with me while I babysat wasn't looking like my best option).

To give you an idea how far I was from this kid's home, here is a map:

I mean, honestly.

So I didn't really know where he could've taken us for a phone and to hang out for a ride, so I told him to take us to the police station. We re-loaded all of his hockey gear from my car into the police car and he let the kid sit up front, with me in the criminal backseat (actually, I think he made it a point that I HAD to sit in the backseat.) I could only imagine what is going on in the kid's head as he's riding shotgun in a police car. Definitely a story for his fellow 4th graders though.

We arrived at the station and I called my friends Scott & Amy in Hartford (midway point between where I was in where I had to go). By the Grace of God, Karma, whatever, they were home and able to get us, let me take one of their cars back to Wallingford and then drive it back to Hartford where they'd drive me back home. Dillon and I waited for them in the police station lobby where thankfully, it was so vacant, uneventful and plain looking, it could have been anywhere. While we're waiting, Dillon, kicking his legs back & forth underneath the bench we were seated on, turned to me and asked, "so, there any bad guys in here?" "Uh, no, not here. Maybe a couple of drunks drying out but no bad guys; they take them somewhere else."

Yeah, I really said that to an eight year old. I didn't want him to be scared AND scarred.

My friends arrived, we parted and I got the kid fed, home and in bed-- BY HIS BEDTIME I feel the need to add, I swore him and his brother NOT to say a PEEP about anything to his parents (I had to swear both of them because the little guy was now BOUNCING off the couch saying to his big brother, "Guess what happened to US tonight! Guess!") because this is just too important and detailed for them to cover over breakfast and I would be handling it in morning at work.

Now, my back was really jacked up against the wall. There was a reason my registration was expired. Actually, make that reasons. I owed about $5-600 in parking tickets. I owed a couple of hundred in past due town taxes. Another $70 to get the car registered. And now add a towing cost of $70 + daily holding rate. All told, if I get everything done "tomorrow" like the lie I told to the officers, I was looking at a NINE HUNDRED DOLLAR NUT. That's 1996 $900. Did I mention I was broker than broke?

Now, I HATE asking for help. HATE. And ESPECIALLY on money stuff. HATE. But this was too big for me to bury my head in the sand on, so I called my father. Who lived in Baltimore. The only upswing in all of this was that I had a check coming in from work to cover money I had fronted to school for about the same dollar amount. So my call was prefaced with, "this is a request for a loan - that I can pay you back in about 2 weeks."

What I didn't foresee was my Dad calling Bernie. When I got to work the next morning, the day of our Christmas party which was to be held at noon at some fancy club, I sat and stewed at my cubicle just outside Bernie's door, waiting and dreading for him to get off the phone. I was going over my schpeal in my head when I heard Bernie get off the phone. The next thing I knew he was asking me in a tone that read "I know" to please come into his office.

"Yeah, " I thought to myself, "Just kill me, it'll hurt less."

"So, you had an interesting night last night, huh? {insert me flop sweating, mumbling something about jail being an opportunity to learn] Yeah, I talked to your Dad this morning...," and we were off. Apparently, much to Bernie's surprise, the boys hadn't lead on the evening's excitement. While he was a tad...stunned...he wasn't mad. If I could go so far to say, I think he found it a touch comical in a "you have got to be shittin' me" way. The reason my father had called him was that he couldn't get the money to me fast enough (I don't quite get that part, what with Western Unions and such but whatever) and could Bernie front the 900 sheckels and he'd mail him a check.

Yeah, this was when the Salt/Wound intros were made.

It just got worse. HE didn't have 900 bucks extra kicking around in his checking account, and a lot of this crap had to be paid in CASH to have it cleared day of (DMV, city hall doesn't take credit either) but he promised my Dad he'd take care of it/me, so he had to call HIS WIFE to that she could TRANSFER FUNDS from their credit union savings to their checking and then he had to make a trip to his bank back home to get the cash. Suffice it to say, when the wife learned WHY she was doing this, I didn't exactly become her most favorite person in the world. It's 10 years later and I'm still afraid to see her.

If a situation has an angle untapped to make my experience even more humiliating, it will be found. This deal did not dissappoint. As much as he was saving my ass on the coin front, Bernie somehow got saddled with the fun assignment (mind you, still my BOSS) of driving me to Hartford City Hall to pay the tickets, to Vernon (east of Hartford a good 20-5 minutes out) to pay the taxes, back over to Wethersfield to get the car registered and back up to Enfield (20-5 minutes north) to get the car of of the impound lot. Oh, and then back to the Christmas party that was by that point already in progress. Yeah, you may want to take another look at that map again.

But what really killed me was that on our way up the parking garage stairs heading into the Christmas party, he handed me 40 bucks for babysitting. I refused twice --at least, but he insisted I take it. Ya know, I never knew accepting forty dollars could hurt so bad. Thankfully there was much alcohol at the party (along with a lot of "we were wondering where you 2 were"s) and we clinked glasses to my newly "street legal" wheels.

Does it surprise you that this was my last paid babysitting assignment?

Comments

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

I got nothin'. There are no words.

Posted by: Meg | June 01, 2006 at 02:20 PM

lol. this sounds so much like my sister's life...

Posted by: Diana | June 01, 2006 at 03:16 PM

Lordy be.

Posted by: Melissa | June 01, 2006 at 03:46 PM

Wow is right!

I'd love to see a letter of recommendation from him, LOL.

I'll bet, he turned out to be one of the best Boss's. Atleast he sounds like one of my best Boss's.

Reach

Posted by: Reach | June 01, 2006 at 05:06 PM

HOLY SHIT. You just made me feel sooo much better about myself. Kind of. Except that kind of thing, or close to it? Has happened to me in the recent past. And I'm supposed to be all growed up. Reminds me a bit of myself and my college loans.

Posted by: Rocky | June 01, 2006 at 05:39 PM

Somehow, this only makes me love you more.

Posted by: Dawn | June 01, 2006 at 07:23 PM

You do not disappoint! Hilarious! Was the Christening the first time your Mom heard this story? (10 years seems about the appropriate waiting period to tell of these adventures to one's parent)

Posted by: Teri | June 01, 2006 at 08:29 PM

You're right, Jen. Only (expletive)you! But still, HA!

Posted by: Elizabeth | June 02, 2006 at 12:26 AM

You guys? the phonecalls I am receiving from my familyyyyy?....yeah, I guess they didn't know this one - or at least most of it.

Posted by: Jen | June 02, 2006 at 10:51 AM

That. Was. Awesome.

You made that kid's YEAR.

I'm sorry you had to go through all that, but it's totally worth it now that all that time has passed and it gave you a rocking story to tell the internet, right?

Posted by: Contrary | June 02, 2006 at 07:24 PM