The boy nobody plays with

I had to babysit tonight, after a fantastic (yet tiring) day at Showa Boston Institute, and I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do. For a few years I have refused to babysit because I'm so afraid of doing something wrong with someone else's kid, even though I know I would rake in the dough ($10 an hour is really good for an actual job, let alone babysitting). However, after a particularly expensive purchase, I promised my dad I would babysit for 20 hours in order to help pay for it. (He's brought it down to 15 hours, because it wasn't as expensive as we anticipated, but I would rather pay for all of it and have some left over, rather than my dad claiming him paying for the rest of it was my birthday present.)

Tonight, I babysat for 2 hours. As of right now, I'm only babysitting girls, because all the people I know with boys who would hire me have very violent, hard-to-control boys. Generally, the girls are more low-key.

I was surprised upon entering my neighbor's house how thrilled the girls were to see me. Well, Elly was excited to see me. Hannah was chewing on her blanket. Back a year or two ago, when I came over to be a "mother's helper" (training for babysitting, basically), Elly seemed terrified that I would take their current sitter's place. I don't know what's changed, but at least she didn't bite me this time.

Hannah immediately assaulted me with the picture she'd just drawn, but then decided to show it to her dad because I was being informed what to do in case of an emergency and given mac and cheese.

While we were watching Cinderella III, her masterpiece double-timed as a mat to sit on, but when Hannah decided I was more comfortable, she brought it to my attention again. She explained to me that the blue square was a kitty, the red squiggles were grass and the rabbit heads that looked a bit like jellyfish were children. After pointing out the kitty, she pointed at one of the children, off the the right, apart from all the other children:

"That's Bob," she explained.

"Why is Bob all alone?" I asked her.

"No-one plays with Bob," she replied.

I tried to find out more about Bob, but she soon became distracted with a purple metallic marker.

She also wouldn't let her mom out the door with me, so I have returned home with no further knowledge of Bob and no money, either.

Oh well. It wasn't as if I really had much use for either of them.