Firing the babysitter

This is from Dorothy Yeaw.

“My babysitter story is almost 25 years old but I’ll never forget it.

“I was a single mother of twin boys. At the time time I was working nights in a cocktail lounge downtown so I had to have sitters come to the house. It was a great job for a student as they didn’t have to start until 3:30 p.m. I had a spare bedroom so they could stay the night if they wanted.

“Most nights I didn’t get home until 2:30-3:00 in the morning. My boys went to bed at 8 p.m. and slept through the night.

“This one particular evening I came down with a sudden and violent stomach flu and had to leave work about 7:30. When I walked through the door I smelled smoke and found a partially burned hand towel in the fireplace from the boys playing with matches. I looked for the sitter and found she had locked herself in the bathroom and was talking on the phone. The boys were playing in their room unsupervised.

“I stood in the hallway for about 15 minutes waiting for her, getting madder by the minute. When she finally came out a huge cloud of cigarette smoke followed her. It was all I could do not to physically throw her out the door. Needless to say, she was fired on the spot.”