Playing Pretend

I babysit. I cannot escape it. It is practically a career by now. And here in Chicago? I babysit for cops. Yet I haven't had the fortune of riding my cute little red bicycle over to The Cops' house for over a week now. And even that last time was only for a few short hours before I high-tailed it out of there.

The time before that? It was a Friday. And I was there for five hours. Five. Now in normal babysitting terms that's nothing. I mean, please. Last summer I was a full-time nanny for goodness sake. Five hours should not faze me. But the Cops' girl is an only child for whom I am there to entertain. For an entertainer five hours is a pretty heft shift.

Now the Cops' girl never really gets in trouble at school. Always gets stickers on all her papers. Always gets her hand stamped for not moving her I-did-something-teacher-didn't-like magnet or whatever it is. And since Friday was Parent-Teacher conferences, the Cops took her to McDonald's as a reward.

This is what came of that. The Cops' girl did not know what it was exactly, although her father deduced it was from a new movie about aliens. And monsters. Because one just isn't enough.

In any case the movie did not matter. Its name was now Gooshie. And Gooshie would accompany us for the whole five hours. Gooshie would be right there with me trying to avoid any games of playing pretend.

And we almost made it home-free.

Until I was forced to say yes to a game of 'store.'
She'd been asking to play 'store' for days. Presumably because of this as yet unused birthday present. I finally caved.

But this thing was no ordinary toy. It really scanned bar codes. And amplified your voice when you spoke into the microphone. So I was having a better-than-normal pretend experience playing with this advanced device. Except for this cash register must have once belonged to some storefront along kiddie mag mile. Because everything was like 50 bucks. Including my mouth which apparently resembles a bar code.

The Cops' girl did not like not having enough pretend money to pay for the items she already owned.

So for the last 20 minutes we switched to play-doh.

Neither I nor Gooshie complained.