I was eleven years old when my parent’s divorce was finalized. Marking a new way of life for my younger brother and me. My parents worked it out where most of the year we would spend with our mother down south where “home” was, but for eight weeks in the summers we would go up north and spend time with our dad. The days leading up to summer I called my dad and begged him, leaving tons of messages on his machine and with his secretary to let us kids stay with mom at home. His answer was always “NO.”
Upon arriving I walked right by him into my new room in my new home and mainly locked my door, rarely ever having much to say to him. My dad was a businessman and worked intense weeks. Just because he got his kids for the summer didn’t mean he was going to cut back much and so he hired a “nanny.” She was a college girl home for the summer looking for an easy way to make money, but boy did she land the wrong gig.
And here enters my confession.
It’s kind of funny now looking back on that summer and how horrible I was to that poor girl, but damnit I suddenly feel guilty and a smidge bad for the pain both emotional and physical I definitely caused her. All I wanted was to go home back south and be with my friends and have things go back to the way that they used to be, but I was young and foolish and didn’t realize that those days were long gone. I decided in my manipulative eleven-year-old head of mine that if Dad wouldn’t send me home then this babysitter was going to. I confess I made her life hell that summer. I threw tantrums, hid her cell phone, money, purse, anything that belonged to her. I took pictures of her taking a smoke brake and gave the camera to my dad. Seriously, I was a little brat. Once I overheard an inappropriate conversation between her and her boyfriend one afternoon, which I promptly told my mother about on the phone, which resulted in a very angry phone call to my father that night, and still to no avail was I being sent home immediately. So I amped it up. One day she took us to a water theme park. I convinced the idiot to go on one of the adult slides by herself and that I would watch my baby brother for her. As soon as she was out of sight I took my four-year-old brother and walked off. An hour later we were “rescued” by theme park officers and a bawling babysitter. That should do the trick, I thought on the drive home. She had called my father from the water park crying and he knew she had lost us. However upon returning home the man wasn’t mad, he was happy to see us alive and well, and not sunburnt. I was furious. Time was running out and I had to get home so I did something so bad, so unbelievably low… I well…. I’m sorry. The next day I talked my four-year-old little brother into thinking that “biting” people was ok, even acceptable. Then I told him to bite the nanny as hard as he could. He did. My father was called and the gig was up. He saw through my devious plans. He sent the babysitter home early that day and apologized. The rest of the summer he brought a lot of work home and spent more time with us making it easier to adjust to our new lives.
Looking back I am ashamed. I should have gotten my brother to bite my dad not the poor innocent babysitter. So I’m sorry naive babysitter that our paths intersected that fateful summer and I tortured you to try and get home, but maybe enough time has gone by for you to laugh about it?…. God your therapy bills after that must have been insane. Again Im sorry.
