For as long as there have been kids, there have been well meaning babysitters getting bamboozled.

Parents work hard to find the right time, place, people to watch their kids and the kids do their best to sabotage, sulk, destroy the hopes and dreams of the babysitter ensuring their parents will never go out without them again.

When we were kids, we used to tell our babysitters we were allowed to unwrap, play with, switch outfits (or weaponry) on our Christmas toys then re-wrap and hide them back in the closet.

We informed them of special dietary needs mandating we eat one full bag of red Twizzlers before choking back the miserably healthy dinner that had been prepared and left by our organized parents.

We insisted it was okay to try on our Mother’s make-up and dress clothes, toss them wherever we wanted as long as it was not within 100 yards of the hangers or closets we took them from.

My husband had a similar arrangement with babysitters and had a memorable visit with a friend whose parents were renovating their basement. The host friend suggested they throw circular saw blades into the newly installed drywall to watch how the metal would stick and make interesting knife patterns on the wall. After several attempts at slicing through the new walls, even Greg wondered if this was acceptable, still, they carried on until the babysitter was dismissed, friendship was forbidden indefinitely and professionals were brought in to mend the damage and the broken dreams of the home owners.

This weekend, while my kids were being babysat by their Grandparents, they refused to use regular toothpaste claiming they used “something else” to brush their teeth. When pressed, nobody could accurately or with any consistency describe what that “something else” was. They insisted they only ate hot cross buns for breakfast (this one had Verbal Kint from The Usual Suspects written all over it as they are playing the song hot cross buns at piano lessons). When we returned they were overjoyed to quickly rat out Grandma and Grandpa for allowing them to watch t.v. shows with teenage hugging that are banned in our home. Like two deer in the headlights, hot cross bun crumbs scattered throughout the house, our bad-breathed kids were tossed in the van.

Of course we later learned of their formal list of demands for their babysitters;

1. They must be read fourteen books each, per babysitter, to the tune of Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me.
2. The host babysitter must fashion pirate patches to be worn as night masks by the children and address them as ‘mateys’ once said patches were firmly in place.
3. Patches must be made from Sears catalogue ad cut-outs and held together with mint dental floss  
4. Crackers could be eaten in any room of the house any time of day or night (what difference did it make if they weren’t brushing their teeth?) They needed something to wash down the hot cross buns.
5. The kids reserve the right to send babysitters on a wild goose chase for a favourite toy they claim has gone missing but one they have secretly hidden as they watch the babysitters exhaust themselves searching for the toy occasionally tearing up, “We’ll never see Rompers again!”