Adventures in Babysitting

So, I babysat three kids yesterday. Desiree is 10, Jared is 8 and Lars is 3, I think. (He and I were never able to reach a real conclusion here.) Their collective English ability consists of: "Hello, my name is ...", "What is your favorite color?", and "Do you have guinea pigs?" (Which, of course, is WAY ahead my second language ability at their ages. But I digress ...) So this naturally made things extra interesting. At no point more so than when, in the pouring rain, I locked myself and Desiree out of the house (Jared was at karate), leaving Lars all by himself watching us through the second floor window with an expression of mild concern.

To explain how this happened, I must explain German doors. Unlike private exterior doors in America, which have knobs and locks that must be manually set from either inside the door or with a key from the outside, all German private exterior doors (at least all that I've encountered) have no exterior knob. They just have this handle apparatus that does nothing to manipulate the latch and lock keeping the door closed. It's just there for convenience when pushing the door open. The thing — and I stress the ONLY thing — that can open the door from the outside is a key. So a closed door is ALWAYS locked to the outside. This means you never never never let that door close behind you without your key on your person. I have been pretty obsessive-compulsive about this so far. I check my purse at least three times for my keys before I leave the apartment because I am terrified of being locked out.

Which brings me to yesterday. Desiree gets home from school and buzzes from outside the yard gate (the gate works the same way as the doors — always locked — and I have to push a button from inside that lets her in). So I push the button, but she buzzes again. I push a different button, thinking I messed up and pushed the wrong one initially. She buzzes again. I look outside at her, bewildered. She does some flailing I don't understand. And this is when I apparently lost all sense. I run downstairs and outside to talk to her and see what I'm doing wrong. It's raining and I'm wearing only slippers. She tells me what to do, slowly and with lots of gesturing (I was right the first time, but she didn't catch the gate quick enough). OK! So I turn around to run back inside and ... yes. The door is closed. And then I'm screaming and Desiree is trying to figure out how to climb the fence. And then we see Lars just standing in the window watching us. So we start waving and jumping and pointing toward the front door and — miracle of miracles — he smiles, bobbles down the stairs and opens the door for us.

And that is how I came to owe my life to a toddler with a stinky diaper.



JEM