The woes of babysitting adults

The things people do for money leave me confused. One thing that blew my mind was a guy who earned a living by waking up in the morning and dressing up like a world wrestling champ, spray- painting himself and posing like a statue in the street.

Thursday, September 06, 2012
Martin Bishop

The things people do for money leave me confused. One thing that blew my mind was a guy who earned a living by waking up in the morning and dressing up like a world wrestling champ, spray- painting himself and posing like a statue in the street. He stood in the same posture for some good minutes without even blinking. I don’t know if I can call it kwihangira imirimo ( job creation)  or what but what I do know is that I normally find  a  multitude of people  who have abandoned their ‘imirimo’  crowded around  this performer and even  dropping in his collection plate some  cash in appreciation of his  art. Seeing that gentleman trying to forge a living, I dug deep into the murky depths of my neurosis to reminisce about some of the peculiar jobs I’ve done for money. Just when I was about to crown myself  the most decent  human  alive, I remembered this one time I had to  ‘woman sit’ my friend’s wife for a few bucks.I don’t know if this guy just undermined my manhood proficiency, trusted me beyond the sky or simply didn’t care. Anyway, I stroked my ego telling myself that I was just the man for the job. Besides that, the money was good and the job didn’t sound so bad. Well, not until it became clearer. I checked out the definition of ‘babysitting’ and it is "the process of taking care of the baby on behalf of the parents when the parents are not around.”  Now, this wasn’t a bay, this was grown woman so how hard could it be really? Little did I know , unlike in the case of baby sitting where  the little angels usually don’t know exactly what they want, and you have to do the thinking for them, baby-sitting an adult is of another nature! They know what they want, where to get it and how to get it. She kept screaming at me not to watch over her as if she were a child. Well, with all due respect, there was a reason I was asked to do this.When my work ethic got a little out of line and the woman was losing her mind, my old man’s words came ringing in my ears. "My Son, there are multitudes of occupations to choose from but choose the one you really want, the one that will make you happy.”  Call me a coward, but I threw in the towel without a thought and sent my friend an apology.