The Nanny's Tale
http://sundayswhirligig.blogspot.com/
12 prompt words in red
The boy, suffering from some wasting disease I never understood,
(and honestly never cared to learn about)
was whining again.
My urge to just leave was growing by the minute,
as I had been tasked with a distasteful burden.
“Watch Leslie for us while we run up to town for brunch,”
his mum had drawled,
giving me a brief finger wiggle as she closed the door of the Jag.
“Leslie?”
Honestly? In this day and age?
Giving their son, already puny and picked on, the name Leslie?
And, do you know?
She has never-ever even let me ride in that car, not once.
Slaggy bitch.
I once smeared peanut butter on the door handle. Guess who got
the
blame for that?
As I said, Leslie was whining.
Whining
Whining
Have I mentioned how whining pushes my buttons?
It does.
Whining pushes my buttons.
Especially the shrill, incessant whining of a coddled child.
I fought back my increasing compulsion to slap the whine out of
him.
As a diversion, more for myself than the boy,
I took him on a walk to the turtle pond,
a short, sheltered path even the boy could manage.
Who’s to blame me for thinking he’d gone back inside
just as I looked down to tie my shoe?
How was I to know he’d stepped too close to the edge to pick
flowers, or look at some stupid turtle?
Oh, the way his mum carried on, you’d think she’d lost a “normal”
child!
I figured I’d done her a favor.
But, as you know, whining does seriously push my buttons.
And, I had told him to stop.
©2020 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved
Quite honestly there are three people at fault here, none of them were really made to co-habit...least of all the baby sitter!
ReplyDeleteNow and again, too often, we do read reports of nannies like this. Parents too, unfortunately. It takes special people to care for children like the "boy" here.
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