Column: Adventures in Babysitting: Part 2

By Thomas Winterhoff

First published on August 1, 2001
Copyright © Thomas Winterhoff

This past Canada Day long weekend, while my wife slept in the other room, I spent my mornings showering with a curvaceous blond.

It was not a particularly pleasant experience, however, since it would seem that the Barbie doll at my feet had spent many days lying at the bottom of the tub (along with a host of other children’s toys, bits of Duplo and various plastic incarnations of Saturday morning cartoon characters). She was looking a little the worse for wear, quite frankly.

I had been staying up in Crofton for a few days so that I could babysit my four-year-old nephew that Saturday, while my in-laws went to a wedding. Readers of this column may remember the near-disastrous results of my last “adventure in babysitting”, but apparently the parents had subconsciously blocked the memory of that particular episode from their minds forever.

In any event, the child behavioural psychologist had apparently given the “all clear” signal and advised Nigel’s parents that the trauma he had suffered after I babysat him last Halloween had more or less dissipated. The lurid and terrifying nightmares about pumpkin evisceration had also ceased. 

“Would I like to have another try at it?” they asked somewhat cautiously. 

Surely I and the poor lad’s parents should have learned our lesson the first time around, but they caught me in a weak moment and they were also desperate for a sitter –  so the arrangements were hastily made. 

What fools.

Normally, friends who see me playing with their children say that I would make a terrific father, but circumstances once again conspired against me that weekend. A heavy workload the previous week and a few near-sleepless nights had dulled my senses and made me especially vulnerable. The fact that two dogs (who have developed into snarling, mortal enemies over time) were also part of the caretaking package just added to all the fun.

The Saturday morning started off well enough. My wife and the rest of the clan went down to the reception hall to help with last-minute catering preparations, leaving Nigel in my care. We dragged out the Rescue Heroes, saved a few beautiful damsels in distress and methodically tested (over several painful hours) how many decibels of high-pitched shrieking my eardrums could withstand.

My nephew is the living, breathing, eating and pooping equivalent of a perpetual motion machine and he was in particularly fine form that weekend. Before the morning was over, we could not see the living room carpet for the thick layer of toys and books that lay upon it, and for some unfathomable reason Nigel had taken to bonking himself on the head with an empty plastic pop bottle – giggling uncontrollably all the while.

Thinking that I’d distract him by making him something for lunch (and boost my own diminishing energy at the same time), I suggested that we prepare that age-old, never-fail standby: hot dogs. All was going well, with much laughter and kitchen camaraderie, until the moment I was about to plunge the hot dogs into the boiling water. Nigel’s eyes opened wide and his chin began to quiver, as he solemnly told me that his Mom never cooks the wieners – his family always just eats them raw.

Nigel was either an innocent three-and-a-half-year-old kid telling the honest truth or a scheming con artist of the highest order, determined to see how far he could try my patience in my sleep-deprived state. I, on the other hand, was a battle-hardened journalist who could spot a shyster at 100 yards. It would be no contest.

The raw hot dogs were delicious.

After lunch, we went out onto the patio and pulled out the paper and coloured pencils. At his request, I drew a host of different animals as he sat back with a raised eyebrow and conducted a running commentary on my staggering lack of artistic skill. 

I can hardly blame his criticism. After an hour under the midday sun, all my giraffes started to resemble pigs and the horses began to look more like guinea pigs than anything else. Eventually I just gave up and wrapped up the art lesson by sketching superbly rendered amoebas. 

Our cultural interlude was cut short by the sound of canine warfare coming from the living room. As a rapidly growing female bull mastiff, Chloe’s idea of a good time was to try to swallow the head of Winston (a small poodle/Shih Tzu cross) in a single gulp. Winston was understandably unappreciative of the subtleties of such a sport. Consequently, he spent much of the ensuing melee with his razor-sharp teeth tightly clamped onto the jowls of the not-too-bright Chloe, growling menacingly.

The two dogs had first met when Winston had pretty much grown to his full adult size of about 20 centimetres high at the shoulder, while Chloe (as a young puppy at the time) was about the same size as the older dog. As time went on, of course, the bull mastiff grew rapidly – to the point where she now towers over her adversary by a factor of about three to one. 

Winston, who has never been the sharpest crayon in the box, still hasn’t grasped the consequences of this significant power shift in their relationship. But Chloe, sweet as she is, is still too naive to take full advantage of the situation and put him in his place. It’s a constant struggle.

At just about the same time the dogs were keeping busy sinking teeth into flesh, Nigel (apparently not fully satisfied with Sir Isaac Newton’s explanation of his theory of gravity) decided to re-evaluate the concept for himself by trying to stand up on the armrest of the couch. He failed to prove Isaac wrong, but he was fortunately unharmed by the experiment.

The fractious fracas between the dogs earned Winston a 20-minute prison sentence in his travelling crate, during which time Nigel, Chloe and I went out for a walk to try to calm ourselves down. 

Chloe is a mere seven months old, but we hadn’t gone more than two blocks before her blossoming feminine wiles attracted the resident Romeos of the neighbourhood. One intensely amorous and very determined dog obviously thought Chloe was the canine equivalent of Angelina Jolie. To say he was persistent in his romantic efforts would be a colossal understatement.

While I was kept busily engaged disengaging the pair, Nigel decided to put a new-found skill into practice. A late bloomer in the potty training arena, Nigel has been intent on perfecting his technique as of late. In the bathroom, despite repeated entreaties to “aim straight”, he is still developing his ability to calculate telemetry equations for parabolic arcs on the fly (so to speak). 

In the outdoor laboratory, however, the playing field was exponentially larger and pretty much anything was fair game. 

With Chloe busy wrapping her leash around a telephone pole in her eagerness to escape the unwanted attentions of her suitor (and me gamely trying to send Romeo packing), Nigel chose that very moment to pop his pickle from his pants. He happily started watering the neighbour’s lawn and the occasional passing car.

By the time we got back home and burst through the front door (almost via the mail slot), this father-in-waiting was ready to call the nearest available doctor to book a vasectomy.

Things eventually calmed down towards evening, as we snuggled up together on the couch to watch Toy Story 2 for what seemed like the 47th time. Before long, Nigel’s head started to droop and he began to snore at a volume that would put an industrial chainsaw to shame.

In my own defence, I have to say that the primary factor behind my alleged lapses in judgment that weekend was a severe lack of sleep. By the end of the day, if my nephew had proclaimed that he wanted to fly off to Colombia to get into the import/export business, I would have given him my full blessing – and even helped him to pack his bags.

When Nigel’s parents returned home late that night and surveyed the post-tornado trailer park that was once their home, they didn’t have to say a word. Regarding my future as a babysitter for their youngest offspring, their gaping mouths and horror-stricken expressions said it all: “Don’t call us. We’ll call you.”