Use Me, Please

Over the past weekend I had a conversation with another mom during which she was telling me all about how icky it was going to be to try to go holiday shopping for her child in the evening time so I brought up the possibility of taking care of her daughter for a few hours one day during the week so that she may shop for the upcoming holidays without gift recipient in tow. I suggested we swap a day. I thought maybe it would be a nice little exchange. Help a momma out kind of thing. Granted I have three children but my children are polite and well behaved at other people's houses. She knows this so that was not an issue. So she seemed really excited at the idea and had planned on bringing her daughter over on Tuesday from noon to four. Then agreed she would watch mine today. No problem. I cleared the whole day. I made sure we were all ready when she got here. I told her to take her time and that she could leave her as long as she needed. As the afternoon went on and the kids were all playing I made fresh lemonade (even with slices of lemon so it would look all pretty) and made the closest thing to homemade kettle corn (that sweet and salty thing is so good!) that I could, thinking it would be nice thing to do for her after an exhausting afternoon of toy store shopping to relax, have some snacks, maybe hang out and chat for a few minutes. You know, be nice. Be friendly. Not make her think she had to pick her daughter up at the door and get the hell out of here. I think mostly I didn't want her to get the impression that I was just doing it for the baby-sitting and that I really was trying to be friendly.

Today I finally got ahold of her at 11:30. She wasn't dressed yet. She said she had a lot of things to do today but if I really needed her to she would watch them, since she had already said she would. I could tell that she really didn't want to be bothered by the whole thing and, as cheerfully as I could, told her that it was okay, not to feel bad, and that I didn't need to go that bad and so she stumbled around the conversation until I think it dawned on her how shitty the whole deal was and she made herself feel guilty and told me that if I wanted to go ahead and bring them over she could run her errands later this afternoon. I went ahead and did it even though at that point I really felt kind of put off by the whole thing now. Still I had one large item to pick up and bring home and I couldn't do that with the children. So I bit the bullet and I was gone about an hour and a half total. I rushed to the store, rushed home to hide it, then rushed back to get them, made sure they cleaned up everything they played with, and that was that.

Maybe it shouldn't have been a big deal that she was so eager to have me babysit for her and then totally made me feel like shit for expecting her to live up to the bargain. I don't know, maybe I just have very high expectations of people. I think people are really nice and they seem to make an effort to be friendly and then it seems to always end up being all about what I can do for them and not much else. It happens all the time. I have a big sign on my back that says "I love abuse." or something.

Maybe I am socially stupid and I just don't know how people are supposed to interact with each other.

Posted by gwendolyn on December 11, 2003 at 05:00 PM