Burrito Dog

When I was a teenager, I used to babysit a lot. I had a sort of mini-daycare set up at one point in time, watching five little blond-haired girls who all lived in the same neighborhood. They'd line up in front of the couch, and I would take turns french-braiding their hair as we watched the Disney Channel and drank Capri-Suns. I ended up having to give two mothers a Braiding Tutorial because their daughters started asking for the style and they didn't know how to do it. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I learned how to do it when I was seven using a World Book Encyclopedia diagram and my Barbie.

I played one game with one of the littlest girls that I called 'Burrito Dog.' I don't know where this name came from, other than the fact that I may have been thinking of a hybrid between a burrito and a hot dog. At any rate, the game entailed the following: I rolled her up in a blanket, her arms pinned to her side, then picked her up, spun in her a half dozen circles, and right before I thought I was going to be sick, I'd drop her gently on the couch. Then pull the blanket out from under her so that she's spin out of it onto the cushions. She'd shriek with laughter and immediately leap off the couch and stretch out on the floor, ready to be rolled again. She could do this for HOURS, which is when I first formulated the rule "Never start anything with a child that you aren't willing to do THREE HUNDRED BILLION TIMES."

I never told the parents about the game, as it never occurred to me to tell them anything beyond what we ate, drank, watched, slept, and pottied. Then one evening the mother pulls me aside in the throes of desperation: "Tatum keeps running at me holding a blanket and shrieking 'BURRITO DOG! BURRITO DOG!' Do you know what she's TALKING about??" "Oh...yeah...turns out she's a big fan of hot dogs wrapped in tortillas. Who knew?"

Just kidding. I told her the game. And ruined her life, as she was then required to spin and flip her daughter every night for an hour for the next three months. That's when it occurred to me that if I ever had a child, I would tell the babysitter to do nothing but SIT ON THE COUCH AND READ AND IGNORE MY CHILD, that way when I got home and did just that, the interaction-bar wouldn't have been raised in my absence. Maybe she can even teach Baby to rub her feet or play the violin quietly in the background.