Creepy Uncle Max (and Other Babysitting Adventures)

One of our vocabulary words today was "vilify."  It means to speak ill of someone, essentially making them out to be a villain (whether or not they deserve it).  One of my girls raised her hand eagerly. "I know a good example sentence for that word!" she said. "All of the babysitters have vilified Creepy Uncle Max!"

"YES!" I replied, matching her enthusiasm.  "That is a perfect use of the word vilify!"  Then I decided that this should probably be a blog post.

My junior high girls have been volunteering to babysit for my cousin Danielle (remember her?  She's the one with five kids and the deployed husband - aka "superhero mom").  I know my girls have felt proud to be "doing their part" to help a military family, and I think it's helped Danielle out to have a few extra hours a week.  Win/win.  Anyway, the girls have been doing this volunteer babysitting since the beginning of January.  Toward the end of January, Danielle's brother Max moved in with Danielle and the kids.  He's "Uncle Max" to his nieces who attend my school.  Apparently Danielle, her girls, and I all forgot to mention that Uncle Max had moved home.  Just this past week, he moved back to Russia.

One day after school last week, Lorelei (Danielle's daughter) was hanging out in my room.  A bunch of junior high girls were there as well (because what better things do junior high girls have to do after school than hang out with a teacher?  APPARENTLY NOTHING).  Speaking to Lorelei, I said, "Did you say goodbye to Uncle Max last night?  He left for Russia today, didn't he?"  She said, "Yep!  I hung on his leg ALL NIGHT and wouldn't let go even when he said let go!"  Perfect.  I bet Max didn't cry about getting on that plane.

"Wait!" One of my girls had overheard my conversation.  "That creepy guy is Lorelei's uncle?!"

"What creepy guy?"  I asked.

"We were babysitting," the girl started, "when suddenly this random GUY just walked in the house.  He didn't even knock!  Just WALKED IN!  He looked at us and said, 'Hey, I'm going to go take a shower,' and then he WALKED RIGHT BY US!"

(Side note - sorry for the excessive capital letters, but junior high girls absolutely speak in excessive capital letters.  It's true.  Trust me.)

"So THEN," she continued, "I was obviously, like, SUPER FREAKED OUT, because who is this random MAN walking in off the street when we're babysitting!?  So I got the phone and was going to call the police, but HANNAH said that we should first check if the kids know him.  So I said okay, and when we asked the kids they said yes, they knew him.  But I never knew he was their UNCLE!"

Personally, if I may interject again, I sort of wished they would have called the police.  Because how hilarious would that have been?!  But I digress.  Back to my story.

One of the other girls in my classroom chimed in with, "No WAY!  That must be the SAME GUY that we saw!  We were playing in the basement with the kids when I heard something going on upstairs.  I thought Mrs. Gibson had come home, so I went to check.  When I got to the top of the stairs, there was this completely RANDOM dude in the kitchen just DOING THE DISHES!  So I obviously freaked out and ran back downstairs to get Terri, who was babysitting with me.  She came upstairs too to see who the random guy was.  But except then he SAW US, which was totally scary, and he said, 'Oh hey, don't mind me.  My dad will be here any minute.'  Which, we were like, WHO IS THIS GUY AND WHY IS HIS DAD COMING OVER?!"  (Max's dad was picking him up for work, I assume, but these girls obviously didn't know that.)  "Anyway, it was SUPER creepy," they concluded.

"Hey!" Lorelei piped up.  "Uncle Max isn't creepy!"  Oops.  I'd been laughing too hard to properly defend Uncle Max.

"Lorelei," I said.  "I know.  But why didn't you tell anyone that he was your Uncle Max?"  She looked pensive for a moment and then said, "Huh.  I never thought of that."

She never thought of that, ladies and gentlemen.

Danielle came to pick up Lorelei, but my girls didn't stop talking once she left.  They were on a roll now.  Apparently all of them had had some sort of run-in with "that creepy guy," but no one had talked about it with each other until this moment.

"...and this ONE time," another girl said, "we suddenly heard toilets flushing and all these noises going on in the house, but no one was supposed to be home!  We were SOOOO freaked out!  Then that guy walked out and said, 'I'm going to go ride my bike,' so I thought, 'Pretty harmless...he's going to go ride a bike,' but then he went outside and GOT ON A MOTORCYCLE!!!"  She said with the same amount of shock and horror that someone would use to say, "AND THEN HE STARTED PUNCHING KITTENS."

"One time when WE were babysitting," chimed in another girl, "We were playing in the basement. One of the kids wasn't doing what we said, and this CREEPY MAN VOICE from upstairs said, 'KIDS!  YOU HAVE TO DO WHAT THE SITTERS SAY!'  and we looked at each other like, 'What on earth just happened?!  WHO IS TALKING?!'  And it was totally that same creepy guy!"

Another girl spoke up, finally getting the attention off Max for a quick minute.  "And then there was this OTHER GUY," she said, "who walked in totally without knocking and said, 'Hey Lorelei, where's the Tylenol?' so Lorelei went and got him some.  Then he said, 'thanks' and TOTALLY JUST LEFT!  AND WE HAD NO IDEA WHO HE WAS!"  Apparently that time the Gibson kids decided to step up and explain that that guy was their grandpa.  Uncle Max was never afforded the same luxury.

"...and the thing about Uncle Max," said one of the girls from before, "is that he wouldn't be so creepy if he didn't wear that gangster hat."

I laughed so loud when she said that.  Obnoxiously loud.  "Gangster hat?" I clarified.  "You have got to be kidding."

"Yes!" all of the girls backed up the first one on the fact that Uncle Max most decidedly does wear a *ahem* "gangster hat."  They tried to describe it to me, but I wasn't getting it.  Finally one of them drew it on the board:

It is notable that she also drew this man smoking a cigarette, and I said, "Erase that.  Don't draw cigarettes on my board.  Why does he have to have a cigarette?"  Her response was, "Because creepy people always smoke, so he probably smokes.  And it makes him look more creepy in my picture."

This was funny because...well...because it was.  Anyway, I've known Max for quite a while (read: ten years) and I have never in my life seen him wear this type of hat.  Either there's another legitimately creepy guy hanging around the Gibson house, or my girls are making up the hat thing.  (Max, if you read this - what's up with the gangster hat?!  Any idea what they're talking about?)  Finally I got the artist girl to admit, "Okay, it doesn't look exactly like that hat, but he totally does have a weird hat!"

After our discussion on Uncle Max, the girls turned to telling me about their other babysitting adventures (Berlynn prayed that God would turn Tucker into a statue...their dog Jasmine makes a break for freedom any time the door is open...the girls like to roll around in the mud, but the boys only like to play with soap... I have tons of these stories.)

I had largely forgotten about our discussion until this morning during our vocabulary lesson.  Kudos to my girls for realizing they had vilified Uncle Max.  After the example sentence, one of the girls piped up and said, "I babysat this weekend, and Lorelei said, 'Uncle Max is gone now, so you don't have to worry about him popping in and freaking you out anymore.'"

Phew.  The Gibson house is safe once again, and my students learned a new vocabulary word.  I can sleep well tonight.

Lunch Date With a First Grader

I think everyone should have a lunch date with a first grader once in a while. It keeps life in perspective.

My cousin's two children go to my school (they're in first grade and kindergarten). The first grader, Lorelei, forgot her lunch yesterday. Apparently she went up to her teacher and said, "I forgot my lunch. I think I should tell Mrs. Webb about this." That made me laugh - those kids know I've got their backs no matter what (and I always will!). Lorelei came in and asked me what to do about her missing lunch. I said that I had plenty; she should take a seat and I would share mine.

She practically jumped into my spare a roller chair (do you remember how exciting roller chairs were when you were a kid!?) and pulled it up to my front table. I grabbed some paper plates and sat across from her, splitting my lunch into halves for us to share. I left the dessert in my bag because I didn't want her to eat it first. Before we even started eating, Lorlelei started talking. "I like that dog," she said, pointing to a toy pug on top of my shelf. "What is it?"

"That's called a pug," I answered. "It's the kind of dog I want."

"Oh." She flipped her hair to turn back to her food. I noticed she had yellow paint in it. Must have been a fun day in first grade.

"Are you going to get one of those dogs?" she asked. She started munching on the chips and rice/bean dip that was on her plate.

"Someday," I answered wistfully.

"Well," she stated, "Don't go to Target to get one. They don't have them there. I've been to Target before. They don't sell dogs." Oh, okay. I mean, I probably wasn't going to try to get one at Target anyway...but good to know. Thanks, kid. Before I could say anything else, she continued. "I think you should get a blind cat."

I almost choked on my chip. I composed myself a second before answering, because first graders appreciate being taken seriously. "A blind cat?" I finally asked. Maybe I misunderstood.

"Yep, a blind cat." She popped a strawberry in her mouth.

"Why a blind cat?"

She looked at me as if I was missing the most obvious answer in the world. "Because," she explained, "cats are lots of fun, and if the cat is blind then it can never scratch you because it won't know where you are."

OBVIOUSLY. Not sure how I didn't think of that before. My bad.

Lorelei continued. "But when you get a blind cat, make sure you don't get a kitten. Kittens are baby cats, and you don't want to deal with that because then you'd have to change diapers."

I had to take another second to compose myself before answering. Poker face, Christine. Get it together. Don'tlaughdon'tlaughdon'tlaugh. "Uhh...actually," I said, "I'm pretty sure that most kittens don't wear diapers. They get trained to use litter boxes."

"Nuh-UH." Lorelei crunched a chip and sat up straight, looking indignant. "I know they wear diapers. My Uncle Joe said."

Well, heaven forbid that I would contradict UNCLE JOE. I shrugged and decided to keep eating my meal. She can put diapers on her kitten one day. I don't care.

Lorelei took another bite of the beans and rice. "Daddy would love this," she said. "He likes spicy things." Her dad is currently deployed in Kuwait. Before I even had a chance to say, "That's cool," she looked up as she suddenly remembered something else she wanted to say. "Daddy sent Mommy flowers! And also chocolate covered strawberries!" I saw the bouquet last time I was at my cousin's house. The flowers are beautiful.

"That's great!" I said. "He loves her very much."

"Yeah," said Lorelei. "I don't even know where he found flowers and strawberries because he's in a desert, but oh well. He must have looked and looked and found them somewhere."

I didn't bother to correct her. Honestly, I sort of loved the romantic notion she had of her dad wandering all around the desert to try to find strawberries and flowers for her mom and then sending them across the entire world before they went bad. I just nodded seriously and said, "Well, he found them somehow." Which is true. Maybe the "somehow" was online, but who needs to know?
"Is there any strawberry milk?" Lorelei suddenly asked.

"Strawberry milk?" I was confused. "Do we have that at this school?"

"Yes," Lorelei said. "I drink it all the time. It's good. I think it's in my classroom."

"Umm...just a minute," I said. "I'll go check." I walked into the first grade classroom and said to the teacher, "This is going to sound really weird...but do we have strawberry milk here?"

"Yeah..." she said, looking at me as if I was an idiot. Apparently everyone knows that:
1. Strawberry milk is a real thing, and
2. We serve it at my school

I'd never seen it in my life. It's not popular in junior high. "I think it's in the fourth grade room," the first grade teacher said. I went into the fourth grade room on my quest for this mysterious product, and there it was: a crate of small pink cartons. I grabbed two: one for me and one for Lorelei. I decided I might as well try it.

I headed back to my room. "Is this even good?" I asked Lorelei. "I've never had it before. I don't want to drink it if it's disgusting..."

"It's good!" she assured me. "I love it!" She opened her carton and started drinking. I opened mine and stared skeptically at the pepto-bismol colored liquid. "Are you sure?" I asked one more time. Lorelei giggled at my wrinkled nose.

"YES!! Just drink it!"

I did. It tasted...strange. It was basically like sugar and artificial flavoring, but creamy. As I was trying to decide if I wanted to drink any more of this weird milk, Lorelei put her milk down, went limp as if she had no bones, and slid slowly out of her chair onto the floor.

"Umm..." I looked over my table, confused. "What are you doing?"

"I wanted to be on the floor!" she said. "Now I'm under the table!" Yes, yes she was. I should really stop asking such ridiculous questions.

"Okay," I said. "That's cool. But hey, if you're ever on a date when you grow up, maybe don't do that." She giggled again, then popped out from under the table to eat more chips.

We ate for a few more minutes when the bell rang for recess. Loelei's eyes got wide, she stuffed one more strawberry in her mouth, and she headed out the door without saying goodbye (there was strawberry in her mouth, after all). I called after her to wait a minute, and she peeked her head back into my room. I pulled out my chocolate candy dessert. "Don't you want dessert?" I asked. She ran back into my room at top speed and literally jumped back into her chair, like if she took too long I would eat all the candy myself.

We shared the candy. As soon as she finished she ran out the door, for real this time, and out to recess. I sighed, finished up the water in my water bottle, and hoped that maybe Lorelei would forget her lunch again soon.

Man Night (An Inside Look)

I didn't mean to crash guys' night.  It was an accident - I promise.

The thing is, men don't plan very far ahead.  Rex came into the living room at around 6:00 and said, "Hey, Eric's coming over in an hour cuz his wife's out of town and he's bored - cool with you?" Eric's awesome.  I didn't mind at all.  I freaked out a little bit, though, because 7:00 is clearly dinner time, and Eric's wife was out of town, which means one thing - he wanted dinner.

"What am I supposed to cook?" I asked, doing a mental inventory of what we had in the house that could be ready in an hour (Probably only mac and cheese or bagels.  Possibly bagel-mac-and-cheese sandwiches.  Could I say it was the latest craze in New York?  Probably not.)  Rex looked at me like I was nuts.  "Um, we're getting pizza and beer, obviously.  It's what men do."

Oooooh.  So it was a MAN NIGHT.  Now instead of inventorying my kitchen, I inventoried which friends I could randomly crash on a Saturday night in order to avoid Man Night.  One of my friends has her in-laws in town, my other friend said she and her husband were in a fight so I shouldn't come over (eeek!), my other friend was up north for the weekend....and that's basically all of the last-minute drop in friends I have.  It was settled: I was going to crash Man Night.

Rex and I went out to get the pizza, and Eric brought the beer.  We got Little Caesars (ew), and he brought Miller Lite (also ew).  I like wine and pasta better, but hey - I'm usually doing a girls' night.  This one was a first for me.  I considered possibly even burping at the table, but eventually decided against it.

As we ate pizza and drank beer, Rex and Eric started talking about man things.  Their first topic was fishing rods.  Eric wanted to know what kind of new rod to get.  Something about a 5/6 or some mumbo jumbo that I didn't understand.  Rods have sizes?  Like shoes?  Because I'm good at talking about shoes...

Eric said he's currently fishing with a graphite Shakespeare.  I pictured a pencil and a copy of Hamlet.  Rex said that Gander Mountain has some good rods.  He's been thinking of getting a new one himself (news to me).  I wanted to cut in with, "I've heard St. Croix is really good," because I wanted to sound smart about fishing, but I couldn't tell if that would sound smart or dumb.  See, I know that St. Croix is a really good rod, but I didn't know HOW good.  What if it was like, stupid expensive good?  What if it would be similar to these guys talking about buying budget cars and I come out with, "I've heard Maseratis are nice..."  That would sound ridiculous.

Imagine my frustration when Rex said, "You know what I really like?  St. Croix."  I wanted to yell, "I WAS SERIOUSLY JUST GOING TO SAY THAT!!" but everyone knows you can't say that afterwards or you just sound dumb (I WAS going to say that, just for the record).  Blast.  Opportunity missed.  Soon after that, Rex talked about working in the fishing department at Gander Mountain today.  He said, "This guy wanted to buy a bait casting rod and saw off the trigger so he could use it with a spinning reel!"  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Apparently that was SUPER HILARIOUS, because Eric and Rex burst out laughing like we were at a comedy club.  I laughed nervously and took a drink of beer.  What on earth does that mean?!  Isn't every rod a bait casting rod?  Isn't that the WHOLE POINT of a fishing rod?  To cast bait?  And since when does a rod have a trigger?  We don't shoot fish...  Is the trigger that clicky button on kid-sized fishing poles?  WHAT IS A FISHING TRIGGER?

I didn't ask any of this, of course, because I had to play it cool and not ruin Man Night with my feminine inadequacy.  They talked about split-shot and cranks and lead weights...basically a lot of things that sounded like they came from a torture chamber and not a fishing department.  I understood maybe about half of it, I pretended to understand another fourth, and the last fourth I just stared blankly ahead and mindlessly chewed pizza.

When the topic moved on from fishing, we started talking about hunting.  Rex is going to a grouse convention next weekend (because apparently that is a real thing, ladies and gentlemen), and he talked about how excited he was that Grouse Dude and Other Grouse Dude were going to be there.  Don't ask me to remember their names.  I have no idea.  Eric seemed adequately impressed, and I attempted a genuine "Wow."  (Time for another slice of pizza?  I think yes).  Rex mentioned that he found fresh grouse poop in the woods last week, and that was very exciting.  (Never mind...I don't want the pizza.)  Rex mentioned that he and I put up two woodcock last week when we ran Ruby.  Eric looked impressed.  I smiled humbly.  I didn't tell him that I actually have no idea what a woodcock even looks like, and it could have been a robin for all I knew.  I just saw a flappy thing and said, "Look!  A bird!" and Rex was all, "Wow!  That's a WOODCOCK!" and I felt very pleased with myself.  

After dinner, I excused myself to "go get things done" so that the guys could have legitimate man time to talk about whatever men say when women aren't around (maybe their deep feelings...or maybe just farts...who knows?).  Anyway, I don't actually feel like cleaning anything, so I'm writing this blog post instead.  Oops, sounds like Eric's getting ready to leave. He just thanked Rex for the "za and barley pops," which is apparently man language for "pizza and beer."  

Oh my.  I have so much to learn.

Toshiba's First

I was standing in the Toshiba science museum in Tokyo when I suddenly burst out laughing.  We were touring the section of the museum that was called "World's First."  Toshiba made many of the world's first technological products.  We saw the first refrigerator, the first washer/dryer, the first laptop, etc.  When we got toward the end of the timeline, our English-speaking guide said, "And this is Toshiba's first ever fax machine, manufactured in 1994."  I started cracking up.  Some of the teachers in my group asked me what was so funny, and I said, "We have that SAME FAX MACHINE at my school.  The only difference is that the buttons are in English."  My school is lots of wonderful things, but "technologically advanced" is not one of them.  We really have that fax machine from 1994.

Last week, I finally had to use it.  I found myself staring blankly at the ancient piece of technology and thinking, This thing was invented when I was in kindergarten.  I have to be able to figure this out.

It was another hurdle is a series of problems I'd faced that day.  I got an e-mail during my plan period from one of our consultants saying, "You remembered to fax those forms to Grand Rapids last week, right?"

Umm...no, I hadn't.  

I dropped everything to get the forms and figure out how to fax them.  Usually I would pass them off to the secretary, but she wasn't working that day.  Of course.  The only fax machine in the building is located in the principal's office, where I'm not allowed to go.  Desperate times called for desperate measures.  I had to get this faxed out before anyone else at school noticed my mistake.  Luckily, my boss left his office unlocked. I looked both ways in the hall before sneaking in.  If I could get everything done before the bell rang, I most likely would not run into anyone and would be in the clear on covering my error.

I stood in the semi-darkness, staring at the blank machine.  Step 1: figure out how to turn it on.  I figured that out pretty easily, as most pieces of technology from the early '90s have giant "ON" buttons (unlike today's cell phones, which I swear hide their power buttons in completely obscure places just to make our lives more difficult).  The luminescent green of the tiny screen reflected on my face, and I put my papers in the feeder.  I wasn't sure if I should put the papers in facing me or facing away from me.  I figured I'd fax it both ways just to be safe.  The place would probably get a stack of blank pages from me, but oh well.  As long as they got the important papers too, I would be happy.

I typed in the fax number, but the machine didn't respond.  I tried typing in the number with the area code, and it still just stared at me.  Didn't this machine realize that I was under a time crunch?!  There was a little over a minute until the bell was supposed to ring.  I started hitting random buttons hoping that one of them meant "send."  The buttons might as well have been in Japanese like the ones at the Toshiba museum.  Finally the machine whirred to life and started eating my papers.  I put them through both ways.  The digital looking letters on the green screen said, "SENDING...SENDING...SENDING..."

I watched it eagerly, also looking at the clock.  The bell was supposed to ring in thirty seconds.  I had to get out of the office.

"SENDING...SENDING...SENDING..."

"SENDING...SENDING...SENDING..."

"Come on.." I whispered to the machine, as if my urging would make it go faster.  I started bouncing on my toes, desperate for this paperwork to get sent.  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the screen changed to say, "COMPLETE."  I grabbed the papers, hit the button to shut down the fax machine, and get out of the office.  I shut the door behind me right as the bell rang.  Success!

I conquered the ancient technology, and the paperwork got to its destination before the parents ever figured out I forgot it.  Good day.