Hi Babysitter! Thanks for coming over and taking care of our little ones! They are our pride and joy. Raising them to be responsible citizens has been quite the adventure! In the course of raising them, however, it has been convenient for us to tell them some half-truths and bald-faced lies to make our lives (and their’s) a little easier. If you could not violate the laws of the false reality we have created for our children, that would help us a great deal. This is just a quick summary, there are many, many more, but these are some that you might encounter in a typical evening.
1) We told Brooklin that the dark brown cheerios in her multi-grain cheerios are chocolate cheerios. Don’t ruin this for us by telling her the truth.
2) Hank calls his earmuffs his ‘earmuffins’ This is so cute and we don’t want to correct him. Please don’t correct him.
3) Brooklin and Hank both have been told that all children go to bed at 7pm. If they hear any children outside after 7pm, it’s just sleep-fairies coming to sprinkle sleep dust on them. And if they hear an ice cream truck, that is the knife-sharpening truck. And if they hear a dog barking, that’s not a fun dog they’d want to play with, it’s a demon wolf. If they hear us having sex, we are simply moving furniture. That one probably won’t come up because we’re not home if you’re babysitting, but you never know.
4) We told the children that if they enter our room and wake us up before 7am, the police will immediately break down our door and arrest everyone in the house, sending each of us to separate prisons and we’d never see each other again. Please make sure you re-enforce this lie.
5) If the song ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel comes on the radio, Brooklin and Hank have to take out all the pots and pans from the cupboard and start banging them together and scream ‘go away Piano Man’, or else the Piano man will come to flay them alive. I told them to do this when I had too much to drink one night and I can’t go back on it now or I’d lose all credibility.
6) As part of preparation for potty training, Hank has to call our toilet ‘Lord Toilet’ and he must leave money at the foot of the toilet before bed. Don’t worry, Hank has money. If you want to borrow the potty training how-to book we’re using, feel free. It’s really good.
7) Brooklin is losing her baby teeth, but we told her there is no tooth fairy. Instead we are donating her teeth to charity. This isn’t a lie, but more of a truth where other parents would normally lie. Although I guess it is a lie, because we don’t send the teeth to charity, we keep them for Christmas time to give to Santa (who is absolutely real, and a good friend of ours).
8) We told the children that Grandma died – a year ago we felt it was a good time to teach the children about death, but all our relatives were alive so we had to make do. In reality, Grandma went to live on the farm to avoid me, my wife and our two children, so it works out!
9) Brooklin has thought that lions are tigers and vice versa for four years now. That one’s just us fucking with her. Boy, will she be pissed when gets older!
10) Finally, I know you like to be called Amanda, but the kids will probably call you El Diablo. Just roll with it.
Thanks again! We’ll be home by 10:30pm at the latest, but we’ll be home earlier if our croquet team gets knocked out in the first round of the tournament.
Sincerely,
Mike and Linda Browne
PS: We don’t have a cat and have never had a cat, no matter what the children say. If they ask about the cat please refer them to weneverhadacat.com, a website we created.
