Zulu cock :o)
My nan, god rest her beautiful, beautiful soul, suffered terribly with cataracts to the extent that in her seventies, the time wherin this tale takes place, she was so near-sighted as to be practically blind. This, however, didn't prevent her from babysitting me and my little brother as she loved us so and we were "never any trouble".

So, mom and dad, went to a show, dropped us off at Grandma Jo's...

It started off small.

Just innocent little things.

"Poke your tongue out at her, she can't see you!", I'd whisper. We were 8 and 6 respectively, this was HILARIOUS.

"Walk through the room with a cushion on your head!", we're *dying* with quietened laughter.

"Crawl around on the floor like a dog and pretend to wee by her chair!"

Me being the eldest, was the one pushing the boundaries. My little brother, the willing victim and daredevil.

The thing is, when people go out, sometimes they come back earlier than you expect them to. This was the lesson we learnt that day.

And that's also why, having had their night out cut short by a powercut, my parents return to my nan's tiny council flat to find me, with the tea-cosy on my head and drawn-on glasses, collapsed in the corner absolutely laughing my tits off at the sight of their youngest child, my little brother, with a pillowcase over his head and dancing a naked 'zulu war dance' less than ten feet from his grandmother. The pillowcase had served to render my brother equally as blind so he continued his jig, his tiny boycock bobbling around for all to see, until the pillowcase was unceremoniously yanked from his head and we were sent to bed.

My cousin started babysitting us after that.
(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 18:21, 5 replies)

Staying Up Late
When I was a kid my mum used to go out with her mates on a sunday night and this meant my dad would watch me and my sister.
We used to love it, he'd get us some sweets and let us stay up really late as long as we didn't tell mum we'd stayed up.
Or so we thought.
Turns out he used to change the clock on the tv so it said 11 instead of 7.
(FootOfTim, Mon 1 Nov 2010, 22:47, 5 replies)

Nurses count as babysitters, right?
When I was 14 I was in hospital for a fairly lengthy stretch with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), one of my nurses was a young, pretty and somewhat busty brunette lady whom I’d immediately taken a bit of a shine to.
In between ogling the lovely nurse I spent my time reading my way though football magazines and playing on the wards original Nintendo.
One day whilst reading about Iwan Roberts’ latest heroics for Norwich City the lovely nurse came along, saw my copy of "Shoot" and started up a conversation about football.
It turned out that she was a Crystal Palace fan and from then on whenever she was working on my ward she would always say "hi" and engage me in a spot of friendly football based banter.

I was a 14 year old boy who had been stuck in hospital for three weeks in a group ward so there was no privacy so having a wank was off the cards, as a result I was incredibly horny and having a pretty darn gosh lovely nurse with real boobies paying attention to me made my mind play tricks and fantasise about things.

I became convinced that lovely nurse fancied me, because you know, pretty nurses always fall for spotty young herberts in their care don’t they? I became absolutely positive that the next time she drew my curtain to give me a check-up and a sponging she’d give me blow job or similar. It was obvious to me, she’d been "flirting" with me for ages.

So it came as little surprise when I was gently woken one night by a soft hand pushing me tenderly on the shoulder. I opened my eyes expectantly, and there was the lovely nurse leaning over me, her face inches from mine and looking directly into my eyes.
"I’ve been waiting ages for you to do this" I whispered quietly whilst taking her in my arms and pulling her down into a kiss, my right hand pawing urgently at her fantastic breasts. At which point she pulled sharply away and yelled "what the hell are you doing?" the bedside light quickly flicked on and there was a very angry looking lovely nurse standing above me holding one of those thermometer things they put under sleeping patients armpits to check their temperature during the night.
Realising I’d made a huge fucking error and was about to get in to deep shit for attempting to grope a nurse, I panicked and blurted out "Sorry, I was dreaming about football!" then realizing that made no sense and was a bit weird I added "Er, no, not football. Tits. Pamela Anderson’s tits" and then I burst into tears.

The next morning I was lying in my bed sheepishly when my Mum came in to visit me and asked me if I was okay and that the lovely nurse had told her that she’d unexpectedly woken me during the night whilst I’d been having a nightmare and that I’d become very distressed.

Which was pretty good of lovely nurse really.
( Dervel OTBC, Tue 2 Nov 2010, 14:32, 12 replies)

I was rarely babysat
as far as I can remember. Occasionally mother would let someone else look after my pod whilst she went and spawned another larva and fed it on her saliva for a few months, but that's by the by.

Anyhoo, I have on occasion been asked to babysit. When I was 18, some friends of my sister, Jane and Rob, asked me to look after their 5 year old little boy whilst they all went out for a few drinks. The deal was that I would go to their cottage in the middle of nowhere, where food, a whole 15 sky channels and Rob's collection of artistic videos for the discerning gentlemen were available for my delectation. All I had to do was let Dylan watch a bit of TV then put him to bed NO LATER than 7:30 with a bedtime story. As they lived in the middle of nowhere, they were going to phone me when they were ready to be picked up and I was going to pop the sleeping Dylan in the car and nip down to the village to pick them up. No dramas.

Dylan was a little sweetie. He watched his Thundercats video, then he had a glass of milk, then we went upstairs so he could have a wee and brush his teeth, then I tucked him up in bed and I read him TWO Thomas the Tank Engine stories. He then fell asleep like I had hit him with a rubber cosh.

Anyhoo, 3 hours later, I am watching a rather entertaining video of a girl who seemed to be very happy that two chaps had just coughed their filthy yoghurt upon her face when the phone rang.

"Alright Carrot, it's Rob. We're ready to be picked up in about 20 minutes, so can you come down to the pub?"

I replied this would be no problem, rewound the video to the correct point and stowed it in its box. I then went upstairs to get Dylan.

He wasn't in his bed.

OK, I think. He's probably gone for a wee, so I nip down the corridor to the bathroom. It's a big house, and the walls are thick so I was not particularly worried that I'd not heard him.

As I walked down the corridor to the bathroom, I saw something that made my blood turn cold. His pyjama bottoms lying in the hallway. I ran to the bathroom. Nothing there apart from an open window leading onto a flat roof sloping down to the garden.

Oh fuck, I think. He's been abducted.

Frantically I search every room in the house looking for him. No sign whatsoever. It's a 15 minute drive to the pub, so I need to find him quick or call the police. Whatever. I am so frantic I nearly lose control of my bowels. This being the age before mobile phones, I run back down to the kitchen and pick up the phone, ready to dial 999.

Now, the sloping roof from the bathroom is over the kitchen extension. As I pick up the phone, I see a flash of pink from my peripheral vision. I spin round to see a butt naked child sitting in a sandpit, with nought but a bucket and spade to his name, happily building sandcastles.

As my heart rate falls to the point where I can detect discernable beats rather than just a constant thrumming in my eardrums, I run outside, scoop him up, and run inside.

"Look Uncle Carrot" he burbles. "I builded a big huge castle wiv soldiers and guns and a moot and peoples and...."

I throw him into his pyjamas and into the car. I screech out of the driveway and down the lane. By the time I reach the pub, Dylan is asleep.

Jane, Rob and my sister stagger out of the pub and into the car. Jane is in the back next to the snoozing Dylan.

"Carrot" she enquires "why does Dylan have sandy feet?"

"Ah..." I start to respond, desperately thinking of an excuse that doesn't involve me allowing their child to take his clothes off, jump down a 6 foot drop and then start building an elaborate series of fortifications that would make the Romans proud whilst I was approaching the Billy Mill Roundabout to Bukkake Babes IV: Backdoor Sluts.

I failed in that, but Rob rescued the day.

"The little bugger's been playing in his sandpit again hasn't he? He's always doing this at night. Didn't we tell you?"

No. You didn't.

Length? Well, he was 5 and it was a bit chilly out...
( Undercovercarrot got done for gross misconduct on..., Sun 31 Oct 2010, 13:37, 3 replies)

not quite babysitting, not quite being a nonce
I took my then 9 year old daughter up the local town park last summer and we had a bit of a kick-about, jumpers for goalposts etc, and we were having much fun, with my comedy goalkeeping and running commentary.
As the time passed, we got a few lookers on behind the goal, and eventually, after the kids had plucked up the courage to ask to join in, we ended up with a situation of having 9 or 10 kids (various ages, both sexes)playing one goal and through, with me between the sticks, still doing the commentary and cheating outrageously to keep them amused.
Two hours into this fest of football, two community support officers came around the corner and asked me if one of the kids was called Frankie, well one was called Frankie, a young lass who was happily trouncing the lads at football, and bloody loving it.
Frankie had been due home an hour and a half ago, and her parents had been (rightfully) worried that she hadn't come home.
Bearing in mind we were in an extremely crowded public park, having a loud and energetic football-a-thon, the fake coppers proceeded to interrogate me as to my intentions towards the kids, how many were mine (!) what their names were (I had gotten all their names for the sake of my commentary) and basically made me feel like a massive paedophile for encouraging a group of kids who hadn't previously known each other (not all of them turned up together of course) to enjoy a game of football, make new friends, all in good fun and all the while entertaining my own daughter, who was having the time of her life with all these new friends and watching her dads comedy dives letting in absolute daisy shots and the like.
Never been made to feel so fucking small and dangerous, all because I supervised a bunch of kids in a Sunday afternoon kick about. Fucking cunting coppers could SEE what was going on, bellends, and I had no objections to them taking Frankie back home (the bit of their job they did well) but no need to make me out to be a dangerous nutter.
So, fuck babysitting, If I cant spend a few hours in the sun kicking a ball with all the dangerous intentions of letting a few soft shots in, then kids can fuck off. Along with community support wankers in their yellow coats up their own arses wankers. Fucked if I want to be left alone with one, I'll probably get arrested for tucking the cunts in!
/BITTER AS FUCK ABOUT IT!
(Unstable-Dan looks like that bloke out of Scream, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 16:42, 29 replies)

Long story short
When I was a kid, we had an exchange student from Sweden. After her stay with us, we ended up getting a string of Swedish au pairs stay with us from the time I was aged about 7-12. I will admit to this being excellent, for the most part. I remember trying to get one of them to read me my math homework just so I could hear the accent and spend some time with a pretty lady. She wouldn't do it, but she was our au pair, so we spent time with her anyway, of course.

In any case, fast forward to me being 19. The original exchange student now has kids of her own and asks if my sister or I would like to come and live with her family for a year. As my sister was studying at a "serious university" at the time, she couldn't go. I was just attending community college trying to figure out what the hell I even wanted to do, so the choice was pretty clear. Stay home and dick around or go to Sweden and LIVE LIFE.

I spent one year in the Gothenberg area, learned the language, took care of their kids & dog, learned to cook, had my first (and last) gin & tonic (that shit is nasty), traveled all over the country, visited the Ice Hotel, witnessed the aurora borealis, and got to kiss Swedish girls. That year is one of the best, most eye-opening years of my life and I would never, ever take it back.

It's also how I got my name. "Inte svensk" is Swedish for "not Swedish."
( intesvensk can't recall when I last checked the newsletter, Tue 2 Nov 2010, 16:55, 1 reply)

sorted

( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Wed 3 Nov 2010, 20:45, 8 replies)

Not quite babysitters
and not quite on topic but how and ever. My second was born just yesterday and has since developed a bit of a temperature. Hopefully nothing to be too concerned about and he is now in the intensive care unit. As a result I watched several nurses look after up to five very poorly baby's each feeding, clothing and monitoring each. When parents came down to spend time with their baby's the nurses were fantastically supportive whilst not giving the parents false hope. I watched them resuscitate a baby twice today within all of five feet of me. It is intensely emotional. They are TRUE babysitters.

Apologies for lack of funnys.
( dazbrilliantwhites has been meaning to change this..., Sat 30 Oct 2010, 20:43, 21 replies)

This works best when you don't have children...
For a bit of fun, hire a babysitter and simply tell them that your child (that doesn't exist) is upstairs sleeping and should not be woken. Then when you get home later that evening, go mental and ask where the child has gone.
( Mr Nerdy-Speccy-FuckNuts Ouchy ouchy wa wa!, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 14:11, 11 replies)

words fail me
When I was about 12, maybe 13, me and my best friend who lived next door used to frequently pull tricks on my younger sister. We would be at the dinner table and she would nip off to the toilet, at which point me and Nikki used to put all our shepherds pie on her plate, and she would come back and eat it all up without even realising. So you can see she was pretty easy to make do things.

Anyway, my Mum and Dad were upstairs having a bath (together, vom.) one summer evening and me and Nikki were to watch my sister and make sure she didn't lick plug sockets/hit the cat/get run over (please bare in mind she is actually 10 years old at this point) etc etc. We were just sitting about playing Mario Kart on the Snes or something, when sister gets a bit antsy, and starts squirming about. Turns out she needs a poo.

Me and Nikki think it's hilarious that she cant get in the bathroom as Mum and Dad are in there, and wind her up saying she musn't go and knock on the door as she will get MASSIVELY told off, and we tell her to go and poo in the garden, obviously not thinking she would actually do it.

10 minutes pass and we are so involved in the computer game that we don't notice my sister had been a little quiet and disappeared. We realise, and call out, only to at that moment see her, in broad daylight, pants round her ankles and squatting on the garden pavement and doing a poo. Our house was semi detached in a cul-de-saq with no fencing, so it's pretty safe to say at least one family around us saw my little sister curl one out in the back garden.

My parents weren't that pleased about it at the time but now it is one of our favourite stories (although funnily enough not my sister's).

Length? About 5 inches and very firm.
(natakins, Tue 2 Nov 2010, 12:19, 16 replies)

Young Master number5 ...
...decided that walking into the room to meet his new babysitter would be best received if he were trouserless with a significant erection and speaking the words : "Look, I can make it go all stiff!"

Downhill all the way from there.

He is older now and won't recall the above but I am saving this story for his wedding day.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 28 Oct 2010, 14:26, 7 replies)

I'd never met the parents
and had only agreed to babysit as a favour to someone else and now I was running late , this was long long ago before mobile phones and so running late was more awkward than nowadays . I got off the bus quickly realising I was in one of the less salubrious parts of town , and noticed that most of the houses had no names or numbers on the door .Time was passing so I ventured up to one such door , and my timid knock was answered by a young boy .I first noticed the loud music pumping out in the background , then saw the spliff in one of the boy's hands , then the can of lager in the other.

'Is your mum or dad in ? ' I asked .

' Does it fucking look like it ? ' he said .
( horace wimp needs more than 49 characters to fully express hi, Tue 2 Nov 2010, 16:23, 2 replies)

More reasons (if any more were needed) not to let me look after your kids.
Me: ...so when you go walking in the woods, you'll see lots of big stones and sometimes when you look under them you'll find a baby which you can keep and take home with you. And that's where babies come from.

Small child: So people who have more babies look under a lot of stones?

Me: Well, some people have more time than others to go up to the woods and look. We call them 'scroungers', because they spend their time scrounging around under stones in the woods rather than going to work.

Small child: So did mummy find me under a stone?

Me: Well, let's just say that your mummy has been into the woods with a lot of boys and leave it at that.
(davywavy, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 11:47, 3 replies)

Damn email jokes
A few years back I had the computer in the living room. To give you an idea of the layout of the room, the computer was on a table that backed onto the East wall, the tv in the room was against the West wall of the room, and a sofa was positioned, facing the tv (and away from the computer) a few feet behind the computer desks chair.

This fateful afternoon the then-wife was out, and I had been left to watch over the three kids, all of whom were under the age of 6. Having done the fatherly thing of acting like a loon and generally being a bouncy castle, they got bored and the eldest declared that she wanted to watch tv. No problem, tv on, the eldest made herself comfy on the sofa, the other two quickly followed and within a couple of minutes all three were watching the tv transfixed.

I sat down at the pc and checked my emails. Nothing of note, save for an email from a friend with an attachment. Knowing that this friend only ever sent me forwarded jokes, I decided to download it - a tiny movie attachment called "sex". It downloaded in seconds. I glanced over my shoulder and sure enough the kids were all absolutely mesmerised by whatever rubbish CBeebies were serving up that day.

Brilliant. I double clicked on the attachment and it booted up in WinAmp. A ten second clip of something. As it started, it showed a beautiful landscape. A lake in Summer, mountains in the background and the camera very slowly panning to the left, with a low volume porn-like soundtrack playing in the background.

All of a sudden, as the camera panned, a woman dressed as a half-dead witch popped up from nowhere and let out a piercing scream, before the clip finished and the application returned to the desktop.

What I hadn't realised was that in the few seconds inbetween me checking the kids and starting the clip, they had all stood on the sofa, turned around and started watching the slip with me. When the witch popped up and screamed, the two eldest collectively filled their pants and screamed, scaring me more than the original in-film scream, and this in turn caused the youngest, who wasn't really paying too much attention, to start crying.

So now I had me on the verge of a heart attack, the two eldest absolutely terrified and the youngest crying her heart out. This, naturally, was the time that the wife decided to return.

On seeing the pandemonium before her, she asked an ashen-faced me what had happened. I explained about the email, and the clip and how the kids were watching tv, and that I had realised the clip would be a jokey clip and and had played it not realising the kids were watching.

Apparently, admitting that you have watched a film clip entitled "sex" in front of your three kids is not as innocent as you try to make it sound and results in an argument and, ironically, a complete lack of sex in the forthcoming days.
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Thu 28 Oct 2010, 17:16, 4 replies)

Not really babysitting
I looked after my nephew after his dad had a serious accident. He settled in well, and I hoped I'd be able to leave the family business to him, as my wife and I had never managed to have kids. I thought of him as a son, really. Then I bought two droids and it all went tits up.
(McChinaman banned, Sun 31 Oct 2010, 2:46, 6 replies)

When the Babysitter Comes
A poem by S Crow, age 6
So Mum and Dad are off tonight,
To town to see a play,
But 'town' is just for grown-ups,
And so at home we must stay,
So who will watch the pair of us,
With Mum and Dad away?
Who will be the babysitter,
Sent to watch us play?
Doubtless it will be a daughter of some friend of Mum's,
We'd better be prepared for when the babysitter comes.
I hear that she's a new one,
Well, we'll put her to the test.
I may be only six years old,
But six-year-olds know best!
I'll bet she's at that age,
When girls get lumps upon their chests,
And number "kissing boys" among,
Their boring interests.
Just look at her naive young smile - she thinks this will be fun!
But we will be prepared now that the babysitter's come.
Come, dinosaurs! Come, Action Men!
An army we must field,
Come sleepy little sister,
You can be a human shield,
Rise, kamikaze paper aeroplanes,
We'll take her down!
We'll see who rules this house,
When Mum and Dad have gone to town.
The plastic platoon's ready, let us reload all their guns,
And we shall lie in wait for when the babysitter comes.
See her start to panic,
She can see it's getting late,
And sleepy little sister,
Should have been in bed by eight,
But I know when it's best,
To leave the poor young thing alone,
To be tucked up and fast asleep,
When Mum and Dad get home.
For by the time the front door clicks, we've finished our attack.
I'm pretty sure that babysitter won't be coming back.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 10:51, 2 replies)

My Dad, a rifle, a pair of pliers and about 2 pints of blood.
Must have been before I was born my dad was baby sitting my two elder cousins. Not long after sending them upsatirs he heard an almight kfuffle coming from upstairs. Turned out youngest had shot the eldest in the chest with an air rifle.

My dad got a bucket and mop and a pair of pliers. Eventually he managed to pull the .22 cal dart out, stuck a plaster on my cousin, moped up the mess and went back downstairs to watch the telly.

Those were the days.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 19:56, 8 replies)

Plastic fantastic
When I was about 12 my parents took me to visit my cousin who was a couple of years younger than me. My uncle hadn't realised I was going to be there so had organised a babysitter for my cousin while all the oldies went out for barn dance/cheese and wine/fonsue party (whatever they did in the 70s).

I was old enough to have been left alone and could have sat for him on my own but the babysitter was already there. I was mortified to think that I would be babysat when I was about to become a teenager however...

She was a local girl of about 14 I suppose. To say that my rapidly developing hormones starting pumping was an understatement. Said cousin was put to bed on time and then the babysitter and I began to enjoy a night to remember: she was beautiful (which in retrospect probably means developed) funny, engaging and assumed I was about her age so didn't have that disdain that teenagers have for younger children.

We talked for ages then things rapidly heated up and we moved to the next level...to the snooker room. My uncle is rich so had a full blown games room with a snooker table and assorted games paraphenalia: We had hours of fun throwing darts, pre-tend boxing using the punch bag, playing snooker, table tennis, cards. I think there was even an Atari games console. We laughed, drank (ice cream sodas), ate fine food (monster munch and leftover chinese) What a night. Doing all the things I would do during the day with my cousin but with a beautiful girl who had become my vision of the perfect woman.

At the end of the evening I just didn't want to go home but my parents arrived and that was it.

On the way home my parents asked me about the babysitter. More specifically they asked whether I thought it was a bit weird. I hadn't got a clue what they were going on about. "What was weird?" I asked. Well, didn't her plastic arm look a bit funny?

I met her again at a family do shortly afterwards and lo and behold she had a completely prosthetic arm with a plastic 'formerly belonged on a dummy from Burton's manequin' hand at the end of it. I'd played snooker with her and not noticed FFS! My innocent mind and raging hormones had blinded me to any imperfection.

(Incidentally, arm or none, I still would have! I've also just realised why I find the one-armed present of CBeebies particularly attractive - and her stump is not the nicest!)
(Gusofnavarone always makes a map of france from sarnies, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 16:34, 6 replies)

Happy Days
When I was 18 I was lucky enough to have a very lovely, large breasted, blonde haired, 16 year old girlfriend. We will call her "Jo" (for that was her name).

Jo's dad was huge, scary looking, a builder. Jo and I would get left to baby sit her younger sister on occasion. On one such occasion, we were doing what teenagers do in her bedroom after young sister had gone to bed when her parents arrived home unexpectedly and her mother walked straight into her room to find us in an extremely compromising position (we were having sex).

Fearing the wrath of a 16 year old daughter's father (as I mentioned, he was a big, scary looking man), I crept downstairs sometime later to be confronted by him.

His reaction? A big smile and the words "you were meant to be baby sitting, not making them!"

Amazing.
(stewiegriffin, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 13:20, 25 replies)

When I was a kiddy we had quite a few cats,
but just one me!

Any way, my folks went out one night leaving me under the charge of a young babysitter.

On arriving back home they found splashes of blood up the walls. Going further into the house they found more blood, everywhere.
In the living room they found the babysitter, in tears, 'I'm sorry' she was crying 'I couldn't make it stop'.

Terrified my mother ran upstairs, the trail of blood still continuing.
But there I was, safe and sound, sleeping in my bed.

Eventually they found the source.
Our Siamese cat.
He had cut the pad on his paw and had run round the house shaking it everywhere.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Thu 28 Oct 2010, 13:15, Reply)

Wheeeeeeeebleurgheee!
I once volunteered to look after my sister's 2 year old son at my house while she went out shopping for a few hours. This is before I had kids and he was the first rugrat in our family so i pretty much doted on him. We spent the afternoon watching cartoons and playing with all his cool toys (Brio is still awesome). The attention span of a 2 year old boy being what it is, he got bored of all of that so, inspired by years of being tormented in the same way by my dad, i picked him up by his ankles and swung him round the living room. Instantly this is the BEST GAME EVER. So this is what we were doing when my sister came back - my nephew spinning around the room and giggling wildly. Unfortunately he picked that exact moment to expel the contents of his stomach, painting an orangey-brown go faster stripe of vom across my sofa and a fairly long arc across my cream carpets. My sister found it hilarious, my wife less so (we ended up buying a new sofa after many failed attempts to clean it), and my nephew even less so. for about a year after this, he would occasionally point at me, looking upset and just say 'YOU made me sick.'

I now play this game with my two sons, but only in the garden. I am pleased to say that they are made of stronger stuff and neither has bubbled his carrots once.
(Alphabet Soap boshboshboshbosh, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 13:12, Reply)

Crap crap babysitter / childminder
I can tell you of a lass who looked after me when I was young who was terrible, so bad I think I could have actually been better off being left alone to do my own thing. This is the tale of N.

When I was about 10 (Maybe younger come to think of it my memory is pretty hazy) this bitch woke me up to tell me she was looking after me. Why the hell she did that I have no idea but anyone with a shred of knowledge would think that the best thing to do would be to let a kid stop in bed and not come into the room and bounce all over the bed yelling who you are.

Anywhoo after the initial pleasantries I got to know her a little better and also came to realise that she wasn’t really that good at being a babysitter due to a number of reasons, I won’t go into a comprehensive list as this is starting to drag already so I will just stick with the main annoyances:

She was easily excitable and would spaz out in a manner more akin to a toddler or first year drama students high on E numbers when anything good happened to me while she was there. Really really not my type of thing as I am a pretty grounded (some say miserable looking) bloke.

She would also stop me from doing something just to ask me something pretty stupid and let me get back to whatever I was doing originally. Maybe it was one of those distraction techniques kid psychologists use these days to stop brats smashing things up but I do know that at the time I was pretty pissed at N for interrupting me.

Her voice was really annoying, every time she tried to catch my attention or tell me something I was spending more times controlling my own feeling of rage (and the urge to ram a sword through her head) so I would forget what she had just said. Even now, years later I am just writing about it and I have realised that I am hitting the letters on the keyboard really hard in anger.

Then there was also the fact that she was leading me down the wrong path sometimes. Before she came into my life I will admit that I could be a little sod at times but she encouraged me to do things that were a little more risky like stealing things from our own village (She said it was for the greater good but I ended up taking a bollocking from the mayor when he found out what I did).

Despite these complaints I was stuck with her until my late teens, this all came to a head when I was trying to chat up a frankly hot piece of ass I was trying to get it on with and before I could ask her to give me some space N seemed to realise that she was no longer needed and left.

God knows why I then went off looking for her in the next game, she did bugger all in the final boss fights. Navi you still are a pain in the ass and the worst babysitter/childminder I can think of.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Wed 3 Nov 2010, 16:57, 18 replies)

impressionable cousins
When I was 16ish, I regularly babysat my 3 younger cousins, all boys, probably around 3, 5 and 7 years old at the time. I was quite into metal at the time (dark scandinavian stuff, not american crap), and so begins my cousins' journey into black metal and the devil.

I thought, the lyrics being foreign, they wouldn't understand what was being said, but being so eager to impress me they would grab my cds, google the names, and read up all about them, their lyrics, what they stood for (thank god they didn't look up Gorgoroth), and similiar bands.

From thereon every time I'd show up to babysit I'd have 3 under 8 year olds running up and shouting suggestions of various black metal bands and which songs were best, somewhat to this style.

5 year old: Munch! Have you listened to the new album from Hordes of Maggots?
7 year old: yeah! 'Satan's legion' is awesome!
Cue- 2 year old headbanging violently, bashing into walls and furniture, but too hardcore to care.

I had a lot of explaining to do. Regularly.
(MunchMyBalloons, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 11:24, 4 replies)

Michael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
With one light-hearted story comes another Snark special: sad tales from the 45th parallel.

Being a teenage pinko meant that I would often lend my babysitting services to those in need. It is impossible to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and find a job if you can’t even afford childcare. I’m not saying that I was brilliant with kids, just that I could prevent them from sticking their tongues in electrical sockets.

Michael and his parents lived around the corner from me in what was essentially the corner of a tumbledown breezeblock construction. There were three people in this studio, and both the parents were ‘recovering’ drug addicts, but without the recovery. It was no place for a young boy. I was told that he lived with his grandmother in rather better circumstances, but ‘something had happened’ and he was a ‘special boy’.

Alarm bells didn’t go off – the unfortunate aspect of my hometown was that so many kids had tragic tales of abuse.

We’d grab Fruit Roll-ups and grilled cheese sandwiches to head down to the riverside to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Over the course of several months, Michael and I became good friends. I couldn’t get over the fact that he seemed so damaged by life. He told wild tales, one of which stood out in my mind:

He told me that he was sleeping in bed with his grandmother and that his grandmother didn’t have any legs. Then his grandmother’s friend broke into the house and beat her to death while he hid under the covers. The friend was named xxx, he lived at xxx and was wearing xxx.

Assuming this was a boy fantasist, I nodded my head and ignored what he had to say. He also thought he was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, so why was I to believe him?

Eventually the family moved away and I forgot about both Michael and his stories. Watching television one night, a programme came on about local cold cases. There was a case of a woman – a grandmother – who had mobility issues and was beaten to death in bed in front of her grandson, Michael. He was telling the truth.

What made this more tragic was that Michael never said a word about the assailant to the police. According to the programme, the police had absolutely nothing. Michael knew who did it; he told me. He told me and I didn’t listen.

I tried to dig deep into my brain in order to remember even a sliver of information, but came up with nothing. Instead I called the police and told them ‘he knows’.

Having just looked up the details - 19 years after the murder, nobody has been arrested. Michael still hasn’t spoken.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Tue 2 Nov 2010, 10:40, 6 replies)

Park an Tansys
Anyone from my local area who hears those words will shudder. It is the home for the lowest of the low. You don't get housed there until you have been kicked out of several other council houses. The neighbour hood association insist you have at least three broken kitchen appliances on your lawn. They all live of Iceland junk food and the children are left to fend for themselves at night and you quite regularly see children under 5 years of age wondering about the area at night.

I used to babysit for a woman who I mentioned in an earlier post back on page 1. She was seen in Iceland and asked by a complete stranger "Who babysits for your kids?" she took her number and asked me to call this woman who told me her sitter had let her down and could I babysit. I agreed and that evening walked the mile out of town to the horrors of Park an Tansys. Do you remember in Back to the Future part II when Marty went back to the alternative 1985 and found his home to be a warzone. Well that was nothing to this place, a group of kids were sitting around a burning milk crate and gave me a look that sent shivers down my spine. I got to the house and the door was answered by a woman who looked almost exactly like Tweedledum (or was it Tweedledee?) she told me that the three girls were upstairs and her son was in the living room. For the first time I realised I should perhaps have asked just how many kids she had. She was busy shovelling oven chips on to a large plate and called the kids in they each grabbed a small plate, shovelled off a few handful's of chips then ran off. I noticed the son didn't come for any. I quickly discovered the reason for this, her soon was 3 months old. She fucked off to the bingo leaving me with a baby and three fat, evil girls. I decided the best thing to do would be to concentrate on the baby and let the girls tire themselves out running around. After all, trips the bingo shouldn't take too long.

Bad Idea

Half an hour after she left I heard a scream. I put the baby back in his carry cot and ran to the kitchen to find one of the girls had a massive knife in her hand pointed directly at her sisters throat as she lay on the floor. The sister lying on the floor had a knife pointing at her sisters stomach. I told them to put the knifes down and thankfully they did. I marched them upstairs and found that they had locks on the bedroom doors I locked them both in separate rooms and went back to the baby. As I sat on the sofa I noticed a small flash and instinctively ducked to the right as yet another knife thudded in to the wall right where my neck had been. Sister one had climbed out of her upstairs window, snuck in the house let her other sister out and together the had decided to kill me. They ran out of the front door and sister number three followed them. They ran around the house screaming and screeching. I locked the doors and left them to it.

Their mother arrived home about an hour later and never even questioned why her three daughters were running around outside, I told her what they had done and she brushed it off saying "Oh they always do things like that" I couldn't believe just how nonchalant she was being over the whole thing. I was trying to explain to the woman that her kids had tried to kill me! I told her that I wasn't willing to babysit for her ever again and not to call me. Despite this she phoned me at least three times a week to ask if I would. Every time I gave the standard "No, your kids tried to kill me" response and every time it seemed to go in one ear and out of the other. After a month or so she stopped calling though. If I had been older than 15 I think I would have dealt with it all a lot better but I had never looked after a baby before and really had no idea what to do with three demon kids with knives. I still see the family 14 years later and they always say hello and act all friendly and I even overheard her say to her now 14 year old son "He used to babysit for you when you were a baby" yeah for one night and I never went back! The kids are in their early 20's now and they haven't changed a bit. They are just as fat and evil and I still wouldn't babysit for them.

Apologies for length
( Peej, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 12:20, 6 replies)

Stand-In

I know a stand-in isn't a babysitter - but it's in the same ballpark.

So, I take it you've heard that Peter Jackson is shooting The Hobbit in New Zealand? Well, he's looking for a stand-in for Gollum during some of the more dangerous scenes.

Anyone got Amorous Badger's CV?


Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 10:52, 28 replies)

we had, what they call in the music business, a 'family' of sitars
a large sitar which as a child i called 'daddy sitar', a smaller one which in the same spirit I named 'mummy sitar' and a really small novelty sitar which we all would affectionately call 'child sitar'. Unfortunately my babysitter accidently sat on it and it broke. =/
(augsav forgot about B3ta, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 4:55, 4 replies)

A young lass was supposed to look after me, once, when I was but a nipper...
I chased her off with one of my A-Team action figures. BA beset 'er.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 14:39, 3 replies)

The last resort is often the best.
Mum and Dad used to go out at least one night a week, their so-called "Date Night". My sister was often assigned to babysitting duty and complete control of the television remote against my complaints that I was missing Courage The Cowardly Dog.

So imagine my surprise when my sister had arranged to spend the night at her friend's on my parent's night out. Cue the 16 year old grunge girl from down the street, hair dyed green and all.

She was awesome. After her initial success at winning me over, she replaced my sister as supreme babysitter. She let me watch all the cartoons I wanted (at least until ten o clock), smuggled up those little fun-size bags of Haribo in her bra, introduced me to old horror films at the age of 8 (They're coming to get you, Barbara!) and in the later days of her babysitting me before she trundled off to Uni for some sort of physics degree, she started bringing her N64 up with her under the pretence there was homework in that bulging bag and we went tooth and nail at each other on Goldeneye and Mario Party.

She's partly to blame for my taste in films and music, and I try to copy her so much when babysitting my niece and nephew (We're often in a versus match on Left 4 Dead and my 9 year old nephew royally handed me my ass on Perfect Dark last week. I'm so proud.)

They don't make babysitters like that often enough, do they?
( Trogdos The Raging Cuntmuffin, Mon 1 Nov 2010, 20:12, 6 replies)

Wee Willy Winky
I once babysat for my cousin who was about 5 at the time and a very excitable young tot. Anyway, after several hours of playing Guess Who, and other games, to tire the little monkey out and several aborted attempts to get him into bed I decided that another tactic was to be employed.

Do you remember the character “Wee Willie Winky” and the rhyme that went with this? Well I decided to become the man himself, donning my granddads dressing gown (he was staying with my Nan at the time) and picking up a candle holder I decided to ambush the little tyke on the stairs as he attempted to thwart my plans to get him successfully into bed and asleep, Surely “Wee Willy Winky” the very personification of sleep for erstwhile children would convince him to get to bed and allow me to go back to watching TV in peace? No.

Imagine the scene, I am in position in the landing near the top of the stairs, suitably dressed in WWW style ready to intercept my cousin as he tried to get back downstairs and continue to misbehave. This enough as you can imagine would be pretty terrifying to a child of 5, however I did not stop at the dressing gown, in some massively ill advised display of creativity I thought the costume needed the final touch of taping plastic spoons to my fingers……..

My cousin left his bedroom with happy childish ideas of joining his older more responsible cousin downstairs and getting to watch some grown up (but not that sort of grown up) TV, only to find a hooded maniac with plastic spoons for fingers wielding a candle at him and chanting a slightly menacing nursery rhyme. He went mental and started shouting for me, I thought he was laughing and kept up the disguise for a full 5 minutes (a long time for a 5 year old) before I realised he was terrified and revealed that the maniac was in fact his me, his cousin Superkitty, needless to say I allowed the now highly suspicious lad to return downstairs and watch Thomas the tank engine videos with me until his mum got home and was never asked to babysit for him again.
(superkitty is neither super nor a kitty, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 10:57, 6 replies)