Beasty go?

I was seventeen and had just graduated highschool; my mum had a collegue with two young daughters and a babysitter with a hernia. And so I babysat. I'm a fun babysitter, let's have that clear before we get to the more embarasing parts of this story. I passionately read stories to the diapered sweethearts when they hop on my pillow at 6:45 AM to hear about Noah's ark. I have snowballfights with half the kindergarten when I drop them off at school in the morning and arrive at my first class mildly soaked. And the following story is before and above all an account of my most heroic babysitting act to date.

Just to have that clear in advance.

The youngest was two year old Kelsey, and Kelsey had a little sheep for a stuffed animal. Named Beasty. Yes, we tried to turn that into Whity, Wooly, Lammy and Patrick-Henry. It failed. Now I'm not really in a position to judge. My stuffed banana was called Banana. My popple was called Popple. I had a bird named Bird, a panda named Panda, another panda that was convienently also called Panda, and the undefinable creature with the nose you could suck on, I named Sucklenose. My alltime favorite was a ladybug kinda thing I named Beast. Like I said, no comments here. And Beasty sounds kinda sweet coming from a lisping two year old. Beasy.

The fase of dragging Beast behind me everywhere I went I did skip. Or at least I don't recall my mum telling me stories about searches on hands and feet, or the every ten minutes recurring question 'Oh! Beasy go..?' That could very well be because my mum's answer to that would probably have been something along the lines of 'where you last dropped 'm outa yer hands'. But I'm a sucker for blond pigtails and chunky hands raised in despair. And so, several times an hour, I undertook the journey through the livingroom, from behind the couch and under the diner table, along long forgotten plants and the backside of the DVD collection - Beasty was never anywhere in sight - untill I found a dusty sheep between the freezer and the fridge where - ah, right - she had been playing with magnets five minutes ago. 'Ah!, Beasy..!' she'd say with a pointing little finger. Sounding like she had just personally discovered America.

Because I'm a fun babysitter, I don't spend my days making money reading when I have 2 little girls appointed to me for 3 whole days a week. Nope. I make baths in the backyard. I build glorious sandcastles at the playgrounds. And when I was in a really good mood, we'd undertake the somewhat longer journey to the park. I'm fun, and I'm very responsable. When in buggy, Beasty was to be all but strangled while driving, and Beasty stayed in that buggy when we made our way to the aviary and the slides. Blond pigtales and sad pouts in vain. Fun yet inexorable I was. Fun yet inexorable, untill 4 year old Alana ran up an exceptionally high bridge, crossing an exceptionally wide canal. And I grabbed Kelsey out of the buggy without further thinking and also made my way up there. High up on my arm you can then point to the pretty duck behind me, and when I turned, I saw something white fly from the corner of my eye.

Oh! Beasy go?

'Beasy fell in 'he canal..!' In that exceptionally broad canal, with that exceptionally high bridge over it. Way out of reach of all the sticks in the world, but we weren't quite ready to embrace that conclusion yet. That took 15 more minutes of roaming the bushes with Alana while Kels was stuck in her buggy, looking at an exceptionally high bridge, chanting 'Beasy go...?' Till Beasty started floating towards the Wide Open Pond, and the floating slowly turned sinking.

And so, I swam. Or, refrase: I made my way through 5 inches of water and an infinite amount of swampy dirt. And then walked a straight line home. Alana staring at the wet cirkels appearing on my jeans, me ditching up all kinds of algae from my bra, Kelsey hanging out of the buggy trying to catch a glimps of the smelly heap of wet sheap in the net underneath her.

I haven't even seen them too often after that summer. Every now and then, on birthdays. Every time the question's the same: 'Still remember who that is?' The name takes them awhile. They've long forgotten about me showering myself in the backyard bath with momma's handsoap. But the question is usually answered long before it's even asked, by a look of pure awe. 'You got my Beasty out of the water.'

Damn right I did.