The Nearly Perfect Babysitter

When we lived in Florida we had a fabulous 13-year old baby sitter who lived across the street from us. Emily was responsible, mature, and fun.  The girls adored her.

Emily was nearly perfect.

Her flaw? She liked to roller blade barefooted. In Florida.

We were on our way to Publix when Kimmy noticed Emily roller blading down the sidewalk. “Stop the car, Mom!” she ordered. “Emily can come with us!” Being the obedient parent that I am...er, was, I pulled over so Emily could join us on our shopping trip. 

Emily got in the back seat with Linda.

About 2 minutes later the most revolting, repugnant, odor wafted its way to the front seat.

“Oh my GOD! What is that?” I asked as the fumes engulfed me.

Linda started crying. “Emily took her skates off!” she wailed.

“Mom, roll down the windows…quick!!” Kimmy ordered.

I rolled down all 4 windows at once (which is difficult to do while driving with one hand and holding your nose closed with the other).

“Emily, honey, would you please stick your feet out the window!”  I begged. We aborted our shopping trip. Nobody was in the mood. I parked my car in the driveway for the next few days with the windows down. 

The smell was barely noticeable after about a week. 

(Note: It would be a lie to suggest that Emily's feet looked anything like this.  I've included this photo just for the shock value.)

I had a sort of P.T.S.S. flashback to that infamous Publix trip a couple days ago.  Dave had taken Kevin outside to pee.  Upon his return, Kevin didn’t smell quite as bad as Emily’s feet had 14 years earlier.

But it was pretty damn close.

The first thing I noticed was that Kevin’s neck looked dirty. I got closer and saw that it was covered in some kind of gray sludge...very foul smelling gray sludge.

“Dave, what the heck did Kevin get into?” I asked incredulously.

“Nothing,” replied Mr. Oblivious.

“You guys were outside for 2 minutes. How did you have time to go to the morgue?” Kevin smelled like he’d stuck his neck into the torso of a decaying corpse.

I began wretching.

"Or did he accidentally slip into a septic system?"

I threw Kevin in the sink and turned the nozzle up to fire hose pressure.  

We never could figure out what Kevin had gotten in to.  

Dave swears he barely ventured off the front sidewalk.  

If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that Kevin had encountered one of Emily's old roller blades.

Nah.  He couldn't have.

He smelled way better than that.