Grampa Babysits

“Taking care of kids is easy. Teachers are paid too much”, I kidded my wife, Linda, a teacher on strike. She was getting in her car, going to her shift on the picket line.

“Ha! After a little babysitting, your going to be watching the time, hoping I get home early,” Linda laughed. “You’re about as child oriented as an old troll.”

“I am perfectly child oriented, and look forward to my day with Kayla and Willow. We’ll take walks and go fishing. Got it covered,” I assured her as she drove away. Just because she’s a teacher, she has a sense of superiority when it comes to understanding kids. Or, to be more correct, she always implies that my talents are deficient in that category.

Because of the teachers’ strike, I got to baby-sit my eight-year-old granddaughter Kayla, and her kitty, Willow for the day. What could be easier? Contrary to Linda’s claims, I have tons of patience, and I’m very easy-going.

After patiently waiting forever for Kayla to get up, get dressed, pour a bowl of cereal and not eat any, I suggested going fishing.

“No,” she shook her head.

“It will be fun,” I told her. “There’s a nice hole in the creek where the water swirls around in a circle. You can float a bobber there, and when it goes under the water you have a fish on the hook. Grandma can fry it up for dinner. Yum yum!”

Kayla rolled her eyes. “Yuk yuk, no fun. Fishing is boring. All you do is sit there.”

“Okay, lets take a walk.”

“Willow wants to go too.”

The walk started out nice. A warm wind was blowing the few remaining leaves off the trees, much to Willow’s delight. She would pounce on a leaf and wrestle it to the ground, clawing it into submission. Then she would begin her hunt for another adversary.

“Has Willow had her shots yet?” I asked.

“Didn’t you get them for her?” Kayla answered.

“No. She was sick when I found her, so I gave her medicine that made her well. But I didn’t get her vaccinated before I gave her to you. I told your mom that.”
“Did she get a rabies shot?”

“No, she hasn’t had any shots.

“Yeh, but did she get a rabies shot?”

“WHAT DID I JUST SAY?” Patience, Gary, patience.

Kayla gave a little giggle with a side-ways look at me. Hmmm, is there some kind of game called “Bug Grampa” that I don’t know about? “I think its time to work on your homework”, I said. Linda had left some math problems for Kayla to brush up on.

Half an hour later, I looked over her shoulder as Kayla worked on her subtractions. “That one and that one are wrong,” I pointed out. I expected her to be grateful and immediately correct her errors.

“Oh well, so what’s a little mistake?” she answered.

“When you’re grown up, mistakes can cause a lot of problems. What if you’re an astronaut and miscalculate how much fuel you need? You might run out of gas half-way to Mars!” I could have been such a great teacher.

“I’m not going to be an astronaut,” Kayla answered.

“What do you want to be?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, rolling her eyes again.

I discovered I could roll my eyes too. “I’m going to balance my check book in the office while you finish your homework,” I told her.

Soon, Kayla was at the office door. “Grampa, Willow scratched the cactus plant, and it’s bleeding white stuff.”

“That’s okay.”

“But she licked it and now she’s going to get sick,” Kayla whimpered.
“Willow will be fine. You didn’t eat much breakfast. Why don’t you go fix yourself a sandwich?” I answered. Why can’t I get this checkbook balanced?

After finishing with the checkbook, I went into the kitchen to find Kayla with big fat tears running down her cheek. “Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Willow and I both ate that white stuff and it’s poison and we’re going to die,” she moaned.

“What white stuff?” I asked.

Kayla pointed to a microscopic bit of white sap on the cactus plant. “Willow licked that, so I put my finger on it to see if it’s runny. Then I got it on my sandwich. Now my throat tastes funny. My stomach hurts. Willow’s stomach hurts too.”

I watched Willow chase a tiny ball across the floor. “She looks okay to me.”

Kayla’s tears had stopped. “She meows when I pick her up, and she never used to. She has a stomach ache and so do I.”

I put my finger on the spec of sap, and tasted it. “There, I tasted it too. It tastes like hot pepper, but I’m okay, and so are you.”

“My stomach hurts,” she wailed.

“It’s just in your mind,” I told her.

“If it’s in my mind, why does it hurt in my stomach? Why does my throat taste funny?”

I looked at the barely touched sandwich. “You haven’t eaten much today. Want some chocolate milk?” was the best I could come up with.

Kayla made a face that suggested I had just offered her a dish of road-kill. “Okay, in my smiley-cup please”

I hope I find the smiley-cup. Probably the only smile I’ll see around here today. While I was pouring the glass of milk, Kayla went to bed and immediately fell asleep. I watched her slow, regular breathing, and felt her forehead. She looked okay to me.

My mouth has a funny taste. My stomach hurts. My knees feel shaky. Probably because I did squats yesterday. I picked Willow up and looked in her mouth. I went to the mirror and looked in my mouth. We both looked fine.

Willow and I played ball for a little while, then Kayla wandered into the room, rubbing her eyes.

“Hi,” I said, “How do you feel?”

Kayla was all smiles, but looked a little sheepish. “I feel fine. What’s for lunch?” she asked.

We went to the restaurant for lunch, and had broasted chicken, Kayla’s favorite food. “Don’t tell Gramma that we went out,” I told Kayla. “I’m supposed to fix soup”.

“I won’t tell about lunch if you don’t tell about the white stuff”, Kayla teased.As they say, all’s well that ends well, so on the drive home I congratulated myself on being an excellent baby sitter. Nothing to it. Kayla seemed a little pensive. “Grampa?”

“Huh?”

“How do you know if a kitty has rabies?”

“The first few days, you can’t tell. Then the kitty starts acting funny, biting, and foaming at the mouth,” I told her.

“Willow might have rabies”

“Willow doesn’t have rabies.”

“But what if she does? She’s always biting me. I think I have rabies,” Kayla started to whimper again.

I looked at my watch. Linda, please hurry home. I’m a great babysitter, but I’ve had enough already. If you get home soon, I’ll never again tease you about how easy teaching must be.

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