The time I almost burned a single mom's apartment to the ground.....

Back in high school I did a lot of babysitting. It was easy money and children love me! I had a regular babysitting job with a single mom watching her two daughters. One of the little girls was 2 and the other was 7.

It was a Saturday night and I was going to watch the girls from 6pm to midnight. Because I'm such an awesome babysitter, I took the girls across the street too get doughnuts (mmm delicious.) While meandering around the market, I ran into Tommy. We stopped chatted for a little while. We hadn't seen each other in a few months.

   The girls picked out their doughnuts and we walked home. I dug  for the key in my pocket and opened the front door. I knew something was wrong when giant billows of black smoke came rolling out of the front door!

 My stomach hit the floor. I didn't know why this was happening to me!

  I threw the baby at the 7 year old and screamed "SIT ON THE GRASS AND DON'T MOVE!!!" (They didn't seem to mind.) I then threw myself into the apartment and possible death. I know, I know, I should have called 911. I waved my arms around frantically looking for flames and the source of the fire. I didn't know what I was doing or why I had run into a burning building. I covered my mouth with one hand and waved my other arm around until I manged to clear a pocket of air for myself.

I finally stumbled upon a tiny burnt hot dog on the stove. All the water had evaporated and it was smoking and burning in the pan. Given a few more minutes and we would have lost the whole apartment to a flaming wiener. I guess their mom had put it on the stove and forgotten to tell me (does this make it her fault? Just a little bit?)

  I immediately started opening all of the windows and doors and clearing out the room. I went from door to door borrowing fans to set up around the house. I did laundry, steamed the furniture, vacuumed, scrubbed the walls, Frebreezed the curtains -- I did everything but repaint the apartment. I even scraped the grout in the kitchen. The house was immaculate, probably too clean. I shuffled up some blankets and scattered some toys on the floor. The house smelled like air freshener and camp fire. On top of the obsessive cleaning, I was doing everything and anything to entertain the girls and distract them from what was really happening.

  I collapsed onto the couch in a fit of physical and mental exhaustion. When the mom came home, the first thing she said was, "My apartment smells like burnt wiener!" I said "Oh yeah, I burnt a hot dog, I'm sorry. But we had a lot of fun! We had doughnuts, watched cartoons and played dress up!" I left out the part about almost burning her home and all of her possesions to the ground.

Moral of the story? Don't ever, ever let a sixteen year old babysit, no matter how mature they seem! Given an actual emergency, they will do anything and everything to save your stuff -- except dialing 911.