Prospective dayhome provider sounds nice on phone. She has older children, seems nice enough. I set up a meeting. Scoop my older sons from school and off we all head to address I was given.
Turns out to be a maze of a trailer park.
We pull up to trailer. Kids look up.
One says 'This is the dayhome?'
The other one says 'We can't bring him to a trailer!'
At this point I give them a lecture: "Did I ever tell you to not judge a book by its cover?". Followed by a list of people we know and respect that once lived in/currently live in trailers. (In retrospect, the idea that a day'home' being set up in a trailer has an odd dichotomy to it. Should it not be a day'trailer'? Hmmm)
So they clam up and stay outside to play soccer with an bunch of kids that seem to have collectively suffered a shoelace shortage. Read: all wearing shoes (good) but not a single pair of shoes seem to have shoelaces and said shoes flop about as they run about(bad)
I ascend the stairs, ring the doorbell.
Prepare yourself for this image. I only wish I had photographic evidence.
A man answers. A very short man with longish hair on head. No hair on chest. As in, yes, he was without a shirt. Or shoes, for that matter. I fairly certain he had on pants, but at this point I was averting my eyes.
In the background I see the body behind the voice on the phone. It is occupying a sofa: most of the sofa.
I sit, we talk about her fees. She does not show me the playroom, she does not go over routines. Her two cats and one very loud dog emerge. The baby starts exploring, which is nerve-racking as sitter has an entire corner of the coffee table dedicated to prescription medication. He grabs the bottles and shakes them. What fun! Rattles! Wheeeee! Shake! Shake! I would re-locate him and put him away from the pills, but he would return. I tactfully avoided reading the labels of the bottles as I pried them repeatedly from the baby's hands. Now I wish I had.
Meanwhile, the boyfriend was sitting in room with us. Lurking, rather. And still no shirt.
Can't honestly remember what else transpired as far as conversation. Something about her not having a vehicle, something about her boyfriend being out of work.
Just wanted to get the heck out of there. As fast as possible.
I made a break for the door and the dayhome lady arose with considerable effort: the couch was squished completely flat where she had been sitting, had long ago given up the fight to spring back. We leave, I extract my children from the children of shoelacelessness and assemble in the car.
As I drove away in a state of bewilderment, I find my voice: "Boys, you remember when we got there? Did I ever tell you about something called intuition.....?"
Wow. Wow.
ReplyDelete