And here's an excerpt of a...conversation...I had via Gmail chat with my mom soon after:
And yes, these are both referencing the same instance.
Work this morning began as usual: I got in around 7:00 and worked until it was time for "the morning meeting," which is simply all of us meeting together in our conference room listening to one of the clinicians review what we would be doing and such. I always keep my ears perked for key words like "kids" and "babysitter needed." When these words do pop up - like they did today - I check to see what time it is that our patient is coming in and make sure that I "take a lunch break" or "go pick up data" just before our patient and her children arrive so that I don't get recruited to watch them. But when I looked at the schedule this morning, I found that there was no getting out of this one. Our first patient was arriving at 9:00. I pulled out my cell phone to check the time, and my stomach lurched when I realized it was already 8:53. I began silently weighing my options.
"I could always slip out of the meeting now like I have to go to the bathroom but then just not come back," I thought to myself. This may have worked except that our bathroom is within eyeshot when sitting in the conference room. Darn. Therefore, I had to resort to Plan B.
Immediately after the meeting, I bolted to my office, shut the door, and plugged my iPod's earbuds into my computer tower. I always have the overhead light off anyway, so after quickly accomplishing those tasks, I had successfully made it look like "no one is home." Quietly I sat at my desk milling away, listening to music on my Pandora radio station. After a couple minutes of peace and quiet, the silence was broken - no, shattered - by the sound of two little monsters. And I heard them before they ever made it through the office door. One child - a boy from what I could make out - was screaming at his mother who was correcting him for hitting his sister while what I assumed to be the sister shrieked as if her brother had actually bludgeoned her with a baseball bat rather than slapped her.
"Surely," I thought, "she wouldn't think I'm in here...or at least she'd think I was extremely busy and not to be bothered." I rarely have my door closed; and, trust me, if I could keep it closed when I wanted, it would be shut at all times. This rarity, I figured, would definitely get the point across that I didn't want to be bothered.
Wrong.
There came a knock at the door. But not just any knock. One of those super-petty and light "tut_tut-tut_tut_tut...tut_tut" knocks. I sighed and threw my head back on the chair - I knew who it was: my hyper-happy co-worker. And I knew what she wanted: me to babysit.
"Hello? Sam? Are you in there?"
"Maybe if I don't say anything, she'll just go away..." I pondered. I was actually quite shocked at myself for having thought that, though the next thing to cross my mind wasn't any better.
"I think I'll just yell 'NO! GO AWAY!' then she won't ever ask me to watch kids ever again." I decided to go with the latter of those two plans, but for some reason it didn't come out quite right.
"Come in," I said in a low moan. She didn't hear me. "Come in, I said," I repeated in a less-than-welcoming tone. She heard me this time and cracked the door, peeking her face inside.
"Oh, uh...I have some babysitting for you...um...they're older kids, 7 and 10...they'll probably make their own fun...er...you probably won't have to do much...so...if you want to...bring some work in with you...maybe you can just keep an eye on them so that they don't..."
"...'kill each other'?" I wanted to help her finish her sentence. I figured that must be what she was thinking anyway. Instead, I just replied, "Yeah, I'll be in in a minute," in the flattest voice I think I've ever let out. Even if she didn't know exactly how I felt just then, I think she walked away with at least an idea. So I packed up my supplies I'd been using (I've been working on our 500 person mailing list for our research study, and it's a nightmare) and hauled them all in to the playroom. After setting down my goods, I looked up at the two little urchins. They had only been in the playroom five minutes, and yet they had completely ransacked the place. There were blocks, toys, and coloring books everywhere. I figured I'd try to win them over with my dazzling charisma.
"Hey guys, my name's Sam, what's yours?" The girl, who was the older of the two, answered my first with what sounded like "Alicia," to which I replied, "Oh, that's a pretty name."
"I say-ed 'Den-EE-sha'," she snapped back. I guess I don't have quite the same effect on children.
The boy proceeded to tell me his name and then immediately followed up with yanking a toy horse off his sister and laughing maniacally. I decided Plan B was to pretend nothing was happening and started back to work stuffing giant envelopes with fliers and brochures. This plan didn't last long since moments later I looked up just in time to see the boy shove the tail-end of the same toy horse into his sister's face and declare, "See this? It's a horse's a** just like YOOOOOOUUU." That did it.
"WHAT did you say?" I stood up and marched over to him, standing as tall as I could (all 4'11" of me) and looked him straight in the eye. "I don't think your mom would be happy if she heard you using words like that, understand? Don't use those words here. It makes me very angry. And you don't want to see me angry..." I glanced over at one of the coloring books on the floor: it was a super hero activity book in which all the super heroes were portrayed as their kid version. On the cover included Captain America, Spiderman, and the Hulk. "...or I'll turn green like the Hulk!"
It got very quiet after that. In fact, minutes later, the sister walked over to one of the couches, laid down, and fell asleep. I think it was the only defense mechanism she knew. The brother on the other hand played quietly by himself. I was able to get lots of work done. It was only about a half an hour before they left that he started warming to me, coming over and chatting. He flitted from subject to subject, first discussing his favorite animals, then jumping to what kinds I liked to eat, THEN jumping to whether or not I liked to eat people and "what's the best part to eat?"
Kids sure are funny.
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