I'll set the scene for you. Vinny is about 6, I'm 5 and Zac is a baby. We had many babysitters or daycare providers over the course of our childhood. I'm going to tell you about one. Mrs. W. lived in a large house on a dead end road in a rural area. She and her husband were older than my grandparents but my grandparents were only in their mid forties at the time. They had many children. Most were grown with their own children and older than my mother. They had younger children as well. Some were foster and some were natural born. I don't really remember the mix of kids except their son W. W. was a raging brat. He was one day younger or one year younger than I was. I know our birthdays were very close. Vinny, Vinny's two friends that got babysat there too, and I loathed W. We loathed getting baby sat by Mrs. W. I am sure my mom's perspective was quite different. Her thought process probably was - I am working my butt off to put a roof over your head and food on the table with almost no help. Mrs. W. is a known member of the community, not a child abuser and not harboring child molesters. Deal with it. Well, we dealt with it but hated it the entire time. We hated little W. and it was the most boring place on earth. Either little W. was a spoiled brat or his parents didn't pay attention to what he was doing. He rarely got in trouble. One day it happened. Everyday at 5 pm we all had to sit down and watch Mr. W. watch People's court. That was so much fun :). Little W. mouthed off and this time Mr. W. slapped him across the face. You can imagine the silent party that was going on in the room. The silent cheers of victory. The justice that was finally served. It was truly the best moment we ever had at Mrs. W.'s. Vinny and I didn't get in trouble but his friends often did. The punishment was clothes pins on your tongue. I think we tested out what it would feel like and decided that the beating of little W. wasn't worth it. My mom always picked us up at the W.'s. The only other person that ever arrived unannounced was my aunt Stacey. She was in her late teen years at the time and drove a mountain dew green antique Willy's Jeep. Because the W.'s lived on a dead end street, it was very easy to monitor the traffic coming in and out. Let me just tell you it was a daily prayer, longing, begging of God that we would see the green jeep drive up over that hill to rescue us early from a long, boring day at the W.'s and from a raging little brat. Stacey did come some and when she did she was our knight in shining armor, she was our hero.
Stacey did a lot of other fun stuff with us too.
My grandparents had an inground pool in their back yard from the time I was 4, but they also lived next to a mill pond. The mill pond stretches from the damn on Lermond pond to the flour mill damn, maybe about 1/4 to 1/2 mile. The longest and grossest stretch is from the bridge next to the lermond pond damn and the bridge next to the flour mill. Everyone in the area swam right next to the damn by the flour mill but nobody really ever swam from one bridge to the next. Why not? Well, maybe the thick weeds or large amounts of blood suckers you see in that area. Stacey thought it would be fun to float on inner tubes from the Lermond pond bridge to the mill bridge. Vinny and I were probably 5 & 6. We were very good swimmers by this point because my mom took us to swim almost everyday to my grandparents' pool and the mill pond. The trouble with Stacey's plan was there was only one innertube. There wasn't any way she was touching the leech infested waters. So this is how the lovely floating plan ended up. Stacey leisurely sprawled across the innertube being very careful not to let any part of her body touch the water, while Vinny and Rachael fully submerged themselves in the muddy banks, in the weeds, in the blood suckers' territory. Stacey proceeded to scream if any drop of water touched her sunbathing skin while Vinny and Rachael swam and pushed her from one bridge to the the next.
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