Why I am the worst babysitter in the world

My friend Bill asked if I could babysit Bosco and I said sure. Bill is a new father, a first time father and I have yet to meet young Bosco, heck, I did not even know that Bill had named the new son Bosco, but I am an experienced father and Bill can trust me with this baby and he and his wife can take a night out and reconnect while me and the young child can hang out and get to know one another.

The baby is only about two months old so I don’t even have to baby-proof the house. At two months a baby is really nothing more than a paper weight with arms. He’ll flop around and scream and eat and need a diaper, that should be about it. Maybe we can watch a movie together, it will be a bonding experience.

A long long time ago my brother asked me to babysit my nephew, who at the time was a tiny baby, a teething baby, so a bit older than two months, but still, a baby. I was told he was teething and that if he got cranky, I should dip my finger in scotch and rub it on my nephews sore gums. The minute my brother and his wife pulled out of their driveway, my sweet baby nephew began to scream bloody murder. I thought he must be teething, having never witnessed a baby teething before, I figured this was it. So I found the scotch, poured a glass, dipped my finger in it, and rubbed it all around the babies gums. I took a sip of the scotch myself to make sure it was indeed scotch. It was. The baby screamed some more. I figured I probably had been a bit light on the scotch and refingered the glass and inserted it back into the screaming babies mouth, it did not have much effect, so I took another sip, dipped my finger back in, tried it again, and then again and so on, and so on.

This went on until both the baby and I were pretty close to shit faced.

At some point later that night my brother came home to find both the baby and I passed out on the entry way floor, the glass of scotch spilled between us. I never babysat my nephew again.

I vacuumed the living room and was ready for my friend Bill. The doorbell rang and Bill walked in carrying a fairly substantial monkey. Bosco is Bills monkey. He set Bosco down on to the floor and gave me Boscos hand and reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a couple of bananas and gave me those too. “Don’t let him throw his shit, that is just not allowed.” Bill looked sternly at Bosco and pointed his finger at his face, “do not throw shit Bosco.” He walked towards the front door, turned and said to me, “thanks for doing this. I needed the break.”

“Yeah,” I said, stupidly, “no problem”

Needless to say I have years of experience dealing with monkeys, both housebroken and wild. That should not come as a surprise to anyone at this point. I was a little shocked, because once Bill was gone, Bosco turned to me, looked around, spotted the control for the flat screen TV and in one fairly acrobatic move jumped from the floor in front of me, grabbed the remote, landed on the couch, turned the TV on and immediately started rummaging through channels until he found episodes of the show Designing Women. Monkeys love that show.

I went into the kitchen and drank tequila straight from the bottle. In a few minutes Bosco joined me. It was going to be a long night. I ate a banana and the next thing I knew, Bill was knocking on the door.

I am skipping over everything that happened because quite honestly, nothing serious happened. Bosco did not throw any shit against my walls, he did not spend hours watching Monkey porn on my flat screen, he ate a banana and watched a marathon of Designed Women reruns while I sat in an overstuffed chair nearby and wrote emails to a Russian supermodel I am currently stalking.

It was only the next day, long after Bosco and Bill has been gone that I realized what a trickster that monkey was. I found myself walking to the post office, passing the crack salesmen and the local prostitute, who is very friendly this time of the year. Often times she leers at me with contempt because I am not a customer, but this morning she seemed friendly, he glazed eyes making contact for a change and a methy smile coming over her frail face. I smiled back and then I heard the bird chirping and thought how nice to be experiencing an early spring.

I was walking on a busy street and the birds were chirping again. Spring is in the air. As I was purchasing some stamps at the post office, again, the birds were chirping, loudly, this time, in my pocket. I knew the chirping had very little to do with spring. I pulled my cell phone out and checked, I was receiving a text from my friend Bill, asking how things were. The tone had been changed on my phone, so when I received a text from Bill I heard birds chirping. Strange.

As I was making my way home the sound of a fax machine connecting came from my pocket. Again, strange noise, I check it and this time my phone was alerting me that I was receiving mail, but this alert noise was different than any setting I had ever had before. It began to dawn on me. Bosco.

That’s the thing about monkeys. If they are not throwing shit against your walls, they are messing with the sounds coming from your phone. How do I know this? Because just now my phone started playing Californication because I was getting a text from, get this, Bosco.