They Can Smell Fear

The kids have an innate ability to sense weakness in a babysitter within the first thirty seconds of meeting them, and an equally honed ability to exploit that weakness at every opportunity.

First there was Amy (not Hitler, above. I just liked the picture.) The daughter of CC’s accountant, she was a geeky, shy, fearful girl with heavy glasses to whom #1 taped a “kick me” sign. Yes, all the kids then proceeded to actually kick her, repeatedly, until we came home.

There was Pamela, whose greatest liability was that she just wasn’t all that smart. That’s a problem when you’re taking care of kids who are hell bent on creating a psychological obstacle course that you must successfully pass in order to move on to their next realm of torture. On her third scheduled shift she simply didn’t come. No call/ no show. Can’t say I blame her.

Let us not forget Rebecca, who dragged me into innumerable discussions about What Was Truly Wrong With The Children, and how she could help- all projections of her own issues. It would have been a kick in the pants had she been a psych major or something, but alas, she was merely a girl who was incredibly offended when she picked up and smelled the pile of dirty wet kitchen towels that I pile in a heap on the stairs rather than walk all the way up to the washer. Why would you smell a goddamn pile of dirty towels? Who does that?

Rebecca left after she cornered #2 and grilled her until #2 finally admitted that she didn’t like her that much. Rebecca called me in tears when I was in the Lincoln Tunnel on my way to a two-show day. She could barely get the words out. “I just (sob!) can’t. . . stay here (gasp!). . . when they don’t (sob!) like meeeeeeee”.

More than one sitter has lost track of more than one kid. Not because the sitter isn’t paying attention, but because the little heathens plan it that way. They scatter with timed precision like some kind of roller derby play.

They gang up. They misdirect. They sneak.

They lie.

My worst parenting has come out in these situations. The kids are pleased as hell when they get rid of a sitter they don’t like. We get pissed, not only because the inmates aren’t allowed to run the asylum but because at times, the ones they hate were the only option. We’ve grounded. Withdrawn privileges. Given extra chores. Spanked. Yelled. Without a single lasting effect.

The hyenas sense the weak wildebeest, work together to separate it from the herd, and attack. You can take the hyenas’ video games away, make them clean the garage, and give them an earlier bedtime, but they’re still going to attack when the moment is right.

It’s in their nature.

But the hyenas always have each others’ backs. The kids are never more united than when they’re trying to get rid of a sitter they hate. When you get down to it, I respect the hell out of that, and I’m finally a little bit proud of it.

How To Get Left Alone

Long ago, in a land far away, before there were stepchildren.

I had this awesome apartment in Hoboken. There was very little in it. Some Ikea furniture and two kitchen chairs I rescued out of the trash. Brick walls, hardwood floors, and ceiling fans.

Endless uninterrupted thoughts. No one eating my cookies. Nobody in the bathroom when I needed to get in there. My world was far smaller and far less rich than it is now, but I was blissfully ignorant of that.

It’s been four and a half years since we got the kids and I moved in with CC. I have almost nothing from that apartment in Hoboken, with two notable exceptions. For some reason, those two kitchen chairs that I saved from the trash remain the sturdiest pieces of furniture in my house.

Just a pair of dinked-up wooden chairs that refuse to die. I sit in one to write. It isn’t terribly comfortable. In my house, we need a lot of chairs. There are a lot of butts.

Lately, I’ve been putting a throw pillow on the seat. I keep thinking I’ll get a chair cushion for it, but really, I can’t be bothered. #4 came in my room recently and noticed.

#4: Why are you sitting on a pillow?

Me: I’ve been trying to lose some weight and I’ve actually lost some and you know, I think my butt just isn’t as cushy as it used to be because there isn’t as much fat on it now? And so the chair sort of hurts? And I use a pillow sometimes?

She looked at me for a long time indicating her regret at ever asking. Then she said, “Why is my family so weird?” and left the room.

Being weird gets you privacy.

SSDCountry

So I did an actual gig in Berlin. Believe it or not, that’s why I went. I was doing sound for the guys that performed at a dinner for a business convention. I only had to mix the show. Someone else did the actual work of setting up the system.

Gigs like that- conventions, meetings, seminars, trade shows- are called industrials. My part in it, only mixing the show and not dealing with the system, is referred to as briefcasing or white-gloving.

Most industrials suck more than your average other gigs for the crew. It felt odd to be the client and not part of the crew. I saw how industrials are pretty much the same, no matter what country you’re in. Here’s how:

1) The crew starts at an ungodly hour, completely contrary to any other gigs they do.

In this case, midnight, which meant that all the guys were coming off another gig, and working through with no sleep. The video guy (picture a taller, blonder Arie Luyendyk) had been up for forty hours straight. He told me he had been in a car accident on his way to Berlin from Austria the night before. He wrecked in the woods with no one around and waited two hours for help. And still made the gig on time.

I said, “You must be in pain!” and he said, “No, no, because before? I was driving the racing cars? So I know how to be hit? You go like this,” and he crossed his arms over his chest, each hand on the opposite shoulder. “And then you tuck your head like this?” and he tucked his chin down between his arms. “So no pain,” he said. Germans are so badass.

2) The suits are annoying.

The suits are the liäson between the guys doing the actual work and the clients. They were very nice to me, because I was the client. They’re great at overcharging, getting in the way, and moving things around so that the guys doing the actual work can’t find them.

When it came time for me to ring out the mics, Sven, the sound tech, couldn’t find the mics because one of the suits had moved all his gear around.

The suits had originally told me to stop by around 6am to test. Then they changed it to 8am, then 9am. At 9am they weren’t ready for me. I came back after breakfast and figured I’d wait. Then a lot of German swearing and running happened, mostly swearing in German but some in English, for my benefit I believe, because . . .

3) Something always breaks.

Smoke was POURING out of one of the speakers. I made some crack about how that doesn’t happen very often in America because our power is small. Nobody was amused. So I left again.

4) The shop always forgets something important.

We start rehearsal and one of the mics goes dead. I go, “Hey Sven, this one has a very low signal.” I say this with an affected accent, as if that will make up for me not speaking Germish.

He makes a German sound of concern and retrieves the mic and examines it. “Main problem,” he says. “Big problem. Battery run out.” and then cracks a smile. Funny, because we all know changing batteries is a much easier problem to fix than a smoking speaker.

Rather than send someone out to a drug store to buy batteries, a suit had them sent over from the shop. They didn’t come until an hour into rehearsal, so we were down a mic that whole time because, while they were charging 17,000 Euros for an average quality, large-sized LED video screen- a price that should have included scantily-clad virgins feeding the viewers figs- they did not include with their package any back-up mics, wired or otherwise. They didn’t send enough batteries to get through the show that night, which meant a second emergency delivery (not counting any previous emergency deliveries because of the smoking speaker). Then the lack of extra mics necessitated yet another delivery, because of course, the CEO always makes a speech a these things.

5) The systems tech guy is overworked and under-appreciated.

Sven was exhausted but never lost his cool. He kept cracking jokes. He spoke English. He fixed my computer problems by kindly standing to the side and offering helpful comments until I finally understood what he was talking about. That part wasn’t a language barrier, but a conceptual technological understanding barrier (me).

Again, I say Germans are badass, but beyond that, we’re pretty much all the same.