I've just tried to get a babysitter for next weekend
Apparently, you're supposed to have children. Who'd have known? Noone ever told me.

On an unrelated note, does anyone want to buy a pint of chloroform, a hammer, some lineman's pliers, and a vat of dry cleaning fluid?

Length? They never complain (I think the chloroform confuses their ability to judge dimensions.)
(Large Hardon Collider Bah Bloody Humbug, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 8:25, Reply)

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)

I did a fair bit of babysitting when i was 16
In my mid twenties I was working in a drop in centre for unemployed people.
One day a lad of about 18 came in and seemed to take a bit of a shine to me, much to the amusement of my workmates
Keeping everything professional and him at arms length didnt stop the ribald comments in the office and leg pulling about me attracting a toyboy.
At closing time he asked if he could take me out, I very politely declined.
Lip quivering and he asked me "Dont you remember me?"
And then informed me I used to babysit him 10 yrs back

Christ on a bike!

I didnt hear the end of that one for months
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 1:58, 2 replies)

I taught my nephew to throw up the horns
Where my sister lives there are lots of giant rocks littering the landscape. My sister and her fiancé listen to lots of rock music, especially in the car. My sister foolishly trusts me with her bundle of joy, and lets me take him for walks unsupervised.

For several weeks she couldn't work out why her darling little boy was throwing up the horns and chanting, "Rock! Rock!" whenever they drove past a particular great big rock, even if no music was playing in the car. She was astounded that at the age of three he even knew what a pun was, never mind how to make one.

She only realised when she casually mentioned it over mugs of tea one afternoon, and I couldn't quite stifle my guilty giggles.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 1:26, 4 replies)

My Nan used to babysit for Michael Parkinson
....so that's three degrees of separation from most of the people of the late twentieth century it was ever worthwhile to meet. This would have been sometime in the 1940s I think, well before he was wearing brown suits on prime-time TV

As for me, my own recollections of babysitters are varied - one was a son of my Mum's friend who ran a video shop, so at age six or seven I got to see various Schwarzenegger titles (Red Heat and Commando being among those I remember) as well as a ton of other 1980s action flicks - the occasional sex scene was always fast-forwarded, but not the explosions and war. Later on, there was one fabulously attractive 17-year old who used to tell us about her newly-discovered love of nightclubbing and engage in the odd pillow fight. Once I hit the age of about 13 or 14, however, we were pretty much left to babysit for ourselves (including for a whole week whilst my Mum spent the £600-odd she'd recently won on the bingo on a holiday in Tenerife with her boyf).

Now I'm a teacher, which is, more or less, only a pedestal or two above babysitting, except if I were to spend my classes screening the latest gory action movies I wouldn't expect to be in a job for long, even if the kids might enjoy that more than learning English
(Katabatic wasn't, and will never be on, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 1:14, 3 replies)

Behind our house
in the road parallel to ours, easily reached by a short cut down our back alley, was the local sweet shop. It was a gloomy place full of treasures, where you could spend your pocket money on the penny tray and come out with immense bags of sweeties. The shop was run by two sisters who lived together above the shop. The older one was a moustachioed dowdy type, very kind but rather ugly and a bit frightening. The younger was a 70s dolly bird, long blonde hair, kinky boots, mini skirt... often to be seen in a fur coat, walking her afghan hound. Very hip, but a little odd. She was my babysitter. The only thing I can remember about her babysitting is one night, waking and going downstairs, to find her watching 'Sink The Bismark' on TV. I sat on the floor, between her legs, feeling the vinyl of her boots against my cheek, and the slight roughness and warmth where the mesh of her tights met the smoothness and cool of her boots.

Fetish? Yes, of course.
(Valentine_Sprake immanentising the eschaton since 1983, Fri 29 Oct 2010, 0:07, Reply)

(Repost from last year)
I was a tender, very immature ten-year-old boy. The babysitter was a large woman in a house-sized summer dress. She was sitting on a sofa with all the little kiddies gathered on the floor in front of her, watching TV. I was right between her legs, and I turned around to ask a question....

No panties.... Completely forgot the question....
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 22:43, Reply)

Never let my Gran babysit you...
Now this is unlikely to ever happen to you unless it already has.

My gran is a unique sort. I love her dearly and she has taught me two things. One is French knitting, the other is she is not all there in the head (shouting in the street, comparing family members to Hitler etc) but my childhood was blissfully unaware of anything being amiss.

*Baby's first wavy lines*

The first instance of not-brilliant babysitting was when GherkinLasagna was just a wee pickle. I had asked my gran where our large kitchen scissors were. While my gran did not actively help me find the big, pointy cutting object (waiting for pink, curious toddler fingers) she did not question why I would be looking for them. This was mistake number one. Mistake number two was, upon finding my pointy prize, letting me disappear behind the sofa with them. After a while I emerge apparently unscathed.
Now at this age my hair was so long my mum would help me brush it at night. On this particular evening she took out my pony tail......literally. I can't explain why I did it but apparently decided earlier on my mission was to cut off my hair. Even harder to understand is how the hair band managed to hold it on for the rest of the day. When my mum questioned gran why on Earth she let me do it, her response was

'Oh, I thought she was behind there a long time.....'


Incident number two involved my younger sister who, at the time, was also at a tender young age. This time gran was giving her a bath before bed. Little sister manages to get her hands on a bottle of clear nail varnish filled with gold glitter (it was the early nineties). My gran does not take this off her. Mistake number one strikes again. Mistake number two was watching this child paint her tummy in glittery mess, resulting in dried, raw skin mess. This took weeks to heal and once again after being questioned by my incredulous mother, grans response?

'Oh, well I didn't think she should have it....'
(Gherkinlasagna is probably doing something stupid on, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 21:48, Reply)

My girlfriend used to babysit a toddler
He liked watching Top Gear and she taught him to shout "bang!" every time he sees a caravan.
I don't think his parents don't know why he does this.
( thistle, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 21:01, Reply)

Whilst we're on celebrity babysitting.
I had to look after Jennie Bond's son once. Christ he was an annoying little sod. Should have got him lost in Broadcasting House like his Mum joked.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 28 Oct 2010, 20:51, Reply)

Dog leash
My mother in law weighs 140 kg. When asked if she could look after Robotnik Junior (two years at the time), she promptly bought one of those retractable dog leashes, so that he wouldn't make a run for it, when she took him for a walk in the neighbourhood.

It is also funny to watch him climb up on her. It seems like he is climbing a mountain. A mountain of flesh.

Actually i quite like my mother in law, and they absolutely love each other.
(Robotnik, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 20:22, 3 replies)

As a teenager, I lived in a very small village in Somerset
and our house was a new one, right opposite the graveyard, built on land recently purchased from the Church.

You can guess where this is going I'm sure...was babysitting in the village, found a VHS tape, sadly not grot, instead Poltergeist.

The walk home (the village was unlit) was not a comfortable one...neither were the next few nights of sleep I didn't have.
(TheImmortalJenkins, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 20:02, Reply)

I turned out to be quite a good babysitter
I discovered that all it takes to keep a two year old happy is 120 bpm techno, chocolate and pots of paint. After we got bored painting the furniture and the chocolate started to kick in, I put some banging tunes on and jumped up and down laughing with the kid for two hours. Easy. I'd do it again.
(IHateSprouts is baking a huge pie shaped like an enormous pie, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 19:58, Reply)

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)

Boobie sitter
When i was five or six years old, i used to go to this ladies house whilst my parents worked in the day. I only have mostly blured memories of my times there, but i do clearly remember one time i walked into her bedroom and she was getting dressed. She turned and saw me, got annoyed and shouted "Come for a good look have you?" as she stood there naked from the waste up showing me her breasts. Being a child at the time i had no idea what she was on about so turned and walked off to watch scooby-doo or whatever i did as a child then.

With hindsight that was a bit inappropriate of her to do that. Oh that and the time she gave me a boiled potato on a knife and thought it was my fault that i burned my fingers on it (Yeah, it was straight out of the boiling water and i was always told not to touch knives).

Im not sure she was a registered childcarer...
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Thu 28 Oct 2010, 19:12, 1 reply)

I could have lived out every young boy's dream.
A couple of years ago, I was drinking with some friends at a rooftop bar in my hometown, and one of the waitresses kept catching my eye.

"She looks familiar." I thought. So I went over to her and struck up a conversation. I didn't say anything at first,(EDIT: about her looking familiar) but I did ask her name, and while it sounded familiar, I still couldn't put my finger on where I knew her from. She seemed to like me, judging from all the free drinks she brought me, but the question of who she was still bothered me, so I asked her her full name and when she told me, it hit me.

She was my old babysitter.

At the end of the night, she gave me her number, and told me to call her soon because she was leaving to study abroad in Australia. I couldn't help it, I told her: "You know you used to babysit me when I was a little kid, right?"

She hadn't realized it, and apparently she didn't care, because she told me to call her still. This was my chance, I could live out every little kid's fantasy; I could have banged the babysitter. But I didn't.

She wasn't that hot and I couldn't be bothered.
(raulduke, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 19:09, 1 reply)

One one summer holiday when I was between terms at uni...
I got a job for my mum's boss's daughter's husband (got that?) mowing a lawn. I thought this would be an easy few quid, so I accepted.

Unfortunately, the lawn I was supposed to mow was, without exaggeration, steeper than 45 degrees to the horizontal, and covered in clumps and bumps. I was then shown the lawnmower, which was in fact a petrol-driven hovermower, and instructed to tie a piece of rope around the handle, stand at the top of the hill, and slide the mower down and pull it back up. Also, I had to loop the rope round the safety lever to make sure the engine stayed running. Needless to say I was a little hesitant, but I persevered.

A little after 10 minutes from starting, my mum's boss's daughter came out to check on me, before asking if I wouldn't mind looking after her two young kids while she went to the shops. I couldn't really say no, and hoped they'd just sit inside playing. Instead, they decided to run around playing games in the garden, below the slope. I repeatedly told them to play somewhere else, and they did...for all of a minute...before playing exactly where they were before. On numerous occasions the lawnmower flipped over, and sat upside-down on the floor with the mighty metal blade flailing wildly, which just enticed the kids. They started throwing their toys, sticks and windfall apples on the spinning disc while I desperately scrambled down the slope while telling them to get the hell away from it.

Furthermore, I found myself swearing uncontrollably whenever the mower got stuck, or was about to flip over, which the kids delightedly repeated in my same, exasperated tone.

Over two hours later, I'd finished. Almost every toy that was throwable was lying in shreds on the lawn, alongside splinters of twigs and mouldy apple smoosh. The kids were running round thumping each other calling each other 'fuckers', and I was nearly collapsed from a combination of stress, exhaustion and likely heat stroke. I wandered into the house wondering how the kid's mother could have taken so long at the shops, to find she'd finished long over an hour ago, and was enjoying 'a little bit of piece and quiet' while I was out 'playing' with the kids.
( guffguff fuckes your gradeds balls!, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 18:43, 4 replies)

Three Degrees of Separation
I went to college with a man whose mother used to baby-sit young Bob Zimmerman (aka Bib Dylan), in Hibbing, Minnesota.
(uncle_bud is not the jelly roll king., Thu 28 Oct 2010, 18:24, 2 replies)

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)

Abandoned...
another night out in Germany, another sitter. This particular 'do' was only a five minute walk from our house. Mum hired a sitter, a local girl, who'd been told by her Mum that yes she could sit, but only until midnight. Mum was fine with this and aimed to leave the party in time.
Shit happened, they were late home. The sitter had, indeed, just dicked off at 12. I'd obviously heard the door, come down in my jimjams and gone wandering off into the night looking for my Mum.
They got home at ten past 12 to find the front door open and me gone.
Cue much franticness and terror.
I was found, after a few minutes that must have felt like decades, three doors down with a neighbour of my Mum's who had cool cushions with cats on them and was a favourite place of mine to visit.

*edited to say that this time I was only three..
( Sallyrsm, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 18:03, Reply)

I never kept babysitters long...
...when I was a kid, and still now, the part of my brain that paralyses you in sleep doesn't quite work properly.

So, I tend to act out my dreams.

Screaming, crying, yelling, talking to people that aren't there.. I never actually sleepwalk, but I do do some very odd things, and I'm perfectly capable of maintaining conversations, although I don't quite make sense. I also get very annoyed if anyone suggests I might be asleep, although paradoxically that sometimes wakes me up and I have to sheepishly admit that, ok, yes, that time I WAS asleep...

Anyway, as a child many babysitters we're freaked the fuck out by me being 'possessed' as some put it. Yammering away...

My mum trying to explain beforehand for any babysitters to ignore me if I start talking rubbish didn't really help either.
(inflateable, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 17:55, 1 reply)

Psycho sitter?? Not much...
Mum and Dad were stationed in Germany and one night got a sitter for me, aged five, while they went to the Summer Ball.. The sitter was the daughter of a neighbour and about 15/16
They got called home. The sitter alleged that I'd come downstairs and picked up and drunk a whole bottle of Blue Grass perfume (I think it's by Elizabeth Arden)..
The story was quickly picked to shreds by my Mum who pointed out that the perfume was on the sideboard in full view of the settee so no way could I have come down and got it without being seen.
The second point was, in my bed, an outline of my sleeping form had been created by Blue Grass being poured all around me, taking the colour out of the sheet...
WTF the sitter was trying to achieve I do not know. Suffice to say, the 'rents did not use her services again. And my Mum has not been able to stomach the smell of said perfume to this day, 34 years later.
( Sallyrsm, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 17:45, 3 replies)

that'll be a takeaway for tea, then
as a kid, i was no problem to babysit. give me an enid blyton book and i was happy as larry. however, not many people who babysat me would let me sleep at their houses, for one very good reason:
i went sleepwalking. a lot.
once i was asleep, everyone else was on edge, especially after i was brought home in the wee hours by a policeman after a walk down the main road.
one night, my aunt agreed to let me stay at her house with my 2 cousins. i'd promised her faithfully that i didn't sleepwalk any more. i did, but they had a sega megadrive, so there was no way i was going home.

next morning, i was greeted by a very annoyed aunt. i had, of course, been sleepwalking. it wasn't that i'd lied to her, it wasn't that i'd set off all the alarms, it wasn't even that i'd woken the neighbours and the police had turned up.
no, what really got her wound up was the fact that, during my midnight amble, i'd gone into the kitchen and pissed in her pull-down-fronted oven.
i wasn't allowed to stay again.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 17:35, 6 replies)

Never bite the hand that feeds you
As a young lad of 4, my parents went for a night out and my aunt and uncle were called in to make sure my sister and I didn't die. All was going well until I did somthing naughty, I can't remember what it was but my uncle was telling me off. Now, my uncle dosen't have kids, so he was a bit unsure how to do it. He was telling me off and wagging his finger in my face.

I can vividly remeber his face, his voice, and staring at the finger. What I can't remember is why I decided to bite his finger as hard as I could. The scream was somthing else, as was his face. I went to bed without any tea that night and got a slap on the legs for my trouble when my dad got home.

Never bit anouther uncle.
(Mong goose, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 17:28, Reply)

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)

one night my brother woke up screaming
me and my sister (we were both thirteen-ish, he was three) ran upstairs. he'd had a nightmare and he told us that he'd wet the bed.

this is easily dealt with. we hoisted him out of the bed pulled off all the sheets and started rummaging around for some spare pj bottoms.

only when my sister came to change him, she discovered that he hadn't just wet the bed ... oh no. he'd done something even more spectacular.

so at 11 at night, we stripped him down, plonked him (still howling i might add) in the bath tub, plugged the shower extension in and hosed him down from a safe distance.

when mum and dad came back, we demanded double pay.
(ladyintheradiator, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 17:13, Reply)

rented out by my parents to some family friends
i was only two years older than their eldest son and you could tell that he *hated* this. i was fifteen, he was thirteen and supposedly one of the hard nuts who sat on the back of my bus on the way to school. funnily enough, he never bothered me... perhaps he didnt want me divulging this information to his flea bitten cohorts.

i not surprised he turned to petty crime (putting his feet up on the backs of seats, swearing and spitting namely though occasionally he was bold enough to skive lessons). when i babysat him and his brother there was no television, no games consoles and no proper books (i read a law textbook)... by the end of my five hour shift (earned five measly pounds), i was ready to yell abuse at some strangers
(ladyintheradiator, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 17:09, Reply)

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)

Bindun?
I tried to get a babysitter around the end of October last year, but no luck - they all hung up on me when I said an old mate called Michael from Haddonfield, Illinois was in town. Never worked out why...
(eesnahk, Thu 28 Oct 2010, 16:15, 1 reply)