Adventures in Babysitter Stealing

After an hour or so of Caleb running me ragged through his obstacle course, I was excited to see another parent coming up to the playground.  Maybe my kids would leave me the hell alone and play with somebody else.  As I watched this Mommy pushing her stroller up to the park benches, I thought, "Damn she looks young.  Too young to have a toddler."  When she turned around to get her kid out of the stroller, her T-shirt confirmed my thoughts.

"Class of 2013" it said in big, bold letters.  I started looking around, waiting to see the 16 and Pregnant film crew, but to no avail.

After talking with her for a while, I found out she was the babysitter.  Now I'm faced with a dilemma.  We've been looking for a babysitter for some time now.  Me-Maw just spent a week watching all three of our kids (and cousin Riley) while we were on vacation.  We can plan on her not wanting to watch them again anytime soon, so if the wife and I want a date-night between now and next year's vacation, we're going to need a sitter.

But here's the problem...I'm a dude.  An obvious observation, but one that becomes more prominent when I take the kids to the park and am sitting all alone on a bench while the other Moms chat it up.

As a dude, I felt it would be wrong to ask this young girl for her phone number so she could baby-sit for us.  If my daughter told me that an older man asked for her phone number, I'd have called her crazy for giving it to him.  I'd have said "baby-sitting" while my hands were in the air making quotation marks.

  I'm sure he'd love for you to come over and "babysit."

I've watched plenty of NBC's To Catch A Predator and my scraggly beard and Army cap makes me look like a fine candidate for the show.  Maybe I should have looked for that film crew.  Before Chris Hansen could pop out of a bush, I walked back to my park bench, had a drink, and contemplated where the wife and I would go for our next vacation.  It seems that will be the next time we have a date.