"Making Money the Hard Way"

I once babysat Mrs. Anderson’s devil child at Meadowview. It was a year ago, when Mr. Anderson still lived with them. Erik (AKA Devil Child) was a two year old with your typical Buddha belly and pudgy wrists. In a diaper with a toothy grin he looked harmless, adorable even.



The Andersons were going out for dinner and maybe a movie. They could have gone to the moon for all I cared; I wanted them gone as long as possible so that I could earn some good money.


G-d was I naïve! When the Andersons left me alone, the plump-cheeked toddler with the huge dimples morphed into a two-foot monster. The evening was spent chasing Erik away from potential hazards: electrical sockets, door hinges, plant food, litter boxes, sliding doors—if it was dangerous, Erik wanted to explore. Feeding the Devil Child was an entirely different form of demonical torture. An innocent dinner of peas and chicken nuggets was thrown randomly between my face and the kitchen floor. Yet somehow, the fiend managed to produce a stool the size of Texas in his suddenly sagging diaper. Changing him was a nightmare. I imagined that pinning down a wild boar might just be a hair easier than handling a squirming toddler who refused to get his butt wiped.


When the Andersons came home, there was a spark in their eyes that wasn’t there before. No doubt, their Devil Child regularly sucked their life force on a regular basis and only after a night out did it begin to return.


I earned fifteen dollars that night. The money felt too light in my hands. I expected the weight of several twenties for the handful of hours spent in hell.


“Wow. I thought babysitting would be easy money,” Meeka says and gnaws on a Twizzler. She crosses out “babysitting” at the top of our job list.


“Trust me. We’re better off cleaning toilets for a living. Toilets are cleaner any day than some kid’s dirty diaper,” I say.