i don't even know what 'baccalaureate' means

so, my friend emily suggested i relate a particular experience of mine, and while i'm loathe to put real life situations involving the embarrassment of others in my blog, in fear that i will be somehow followed and killed, i will take a chance on this one because it's just that good. also, i do not remember his name. (sidenote- the vehemence of my irrational fear of being followed and killed via something i said online can be directly traced through my mother, who, if you know her, is always suspicious that some sort of new adventure will end in death. this is mostly a good thing to remember.)

being the lazy, maternal sort, nannying for a summer job is incredibly appealing, and while i've since accepted a job offer from a normal family now, i had been trolling the uw-madison job center website for about a month. mostly, these listings are penned by women, but every so often a man is the primary contact for nanny jobs. this is rare, and as my mother has pointed out, amazingly dangerous. apparently awhile back a girl answering an ad for a babysitter on craigslist was murdered upon arriving at the house of the man pretending to need a babysitter. it's a very serious concern, and thank god my mom is always cognizant of any chance, remote as it may be, of bodily harm or death.

obviously, craigslist is ridiculously shady, and normal people would always, always use caution if for whatever reason they are driven to this site, which is, in conjunction with porn sites and chat rooms, basically the underworld of the internet (sidenote- if my parents stop reading my blog i'll relate the story of how some of my guy friends at madison ordered strippers off craigslist, but here are the sparknotes: "strippers" on craigslist are actually hookers).

for reasons related to his home life situation and NOT in any way related to a quiet yet yearning romance, i will call this man Mr. Darcy.

i emailed Mr. Darcy responding to his ad for a part time summer nanny, and he promptly returned my email, asking when it was convenient for me to meet for an interview. i immediately phoned my mother, hoping to ameliorate her growing resentment toward me for what some could deem chronic unemployment. upon telling her i was meeting with the father of the children, she kind of flipped and said that was dangerous. as always, more hilarious than my mother's actual fears are the ways she intends to neutralize any threat. her first advice was that i bring my roommate kathleen along, who aside from having an actual job herself that she must get to, ostensibly could find nothing more thrilling that coming to a nanny interview with me as my bodyguard. her next piece of advice went something like this:

"okay, ali, what you have to do is drive by his house tonight WITH kathleen and look for some sort of evidence that he actually has children. you know, toys in the yard or something".

after i rejected the admittedly brilliant idea of a late night drive-by, she arrived at the most logical and non-psychotic way to go about this, meeting at a neutral location in the daylight. i emailed Mr. Darcy and we agreed on a local starbucks. i roll up to the starbucks, kinda nervous, and am greeted right away by a normal looking guy. emphasis on the "looking". we exchanged the customary pleasantries and then, the firecracker that started off this mess of an interview, he goes "so, i've never done this before".

maybe it's just me and my addiction to MSNBC's late night special To Catch A Predator, but that sentence carries a weight that no first time nanny interviewer really wants to wield. feeling more like a predator/escort than is decent at 9am on a wednesday, i laughed nervously (the prototypical reaction to hearing "i've never done this before" ) and was absolutely silent for about 3 minutes as Mr. Darcy told me that he's always been home with his kids, and has thus never required a full time nanny.

the following half a hour was minefield of red-flags: firstly, he mentioned that he works "odd hours", which for me, immediately connotes bouncing at a seedy "burlesque club" named Cruisin' Chubbies, or something. next, he casually mentions that his wife will be home but, and i quote verbatim, "she never really leaves the bedroom, and hasn't been in the kids' lives in a while" (disclaimer: the actual reality of this situation, especially for said children, is incredibly unfortunate and a bit sad. however, for the sake of entertainment, i am portraying it as simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, which it veritably is.)

now, the previous statement begs the question, how can a mother who lives presumably down the hall from her two children be absent in their lives? answer: she is an obvious recluse, mentally insane, or hidden in the attic. with each of these options sounding more appealing than the next, i was getting a bit weary and really weirded out by about 9:15am.

the rest of the interview with Mr. Darcy consisted of him alternating working in some really interesting gems ("how would you work conservation of the environment into my kids' every day lives?") with casually dropping some real bombs ("my son has some serious behavioral issues and my daughter sometimes refuses to eat altogether, how would you deal with that?")

the whole time i was basically feeding Mr. Darcy droid-like answers to his asinine questions while imagining the ways in which Mr. Darcy's troglodyte of a wife would inevitably murder me, were i to accept his employment.

i left the starbucks feeling confused and vaguely dirty, not unlike an escort. foiled again, damn you Mr. Darcy!

in an unrelated, unwarranted, and i'm sure largely unappreciated tangent, i am so over people taking time out of their days to imply how superior they are for NOT reading the twilight books. go do something else so we cave people can wonder about those big bright dots in the night sky while you reconcile the impossibilities of the human condition by NOT reading guilty pleasure books. assholes.

and let me just point out that the 8-16 year old girls who, while admittedly ascribing to the long and unhealthy tradition of those pesky Unrealistic Expectations for future relationships, are learning what words like "irrevocably", "masochistic", "omnipresent", and "disconcerting" mean. that, in this english major's opinion, is worth a little self-indulgence.

excuse me, maitre d? i did not order this.

the one thing too many people take for granted is that sometimes it is necessary to stop the truth from getting in the way of telling other people how you feel. i won't let the truth stop me from telling you how i feel, and i'm committed to that. it used to be an act of protection, and now it's an art.