Call it revenge, or just the price you pay for a free babysitter. Reddit user Megssister tells her story about how she watched the neighborhood kids during a water balloon fight, but their parents sure would pay the price!
“The summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college (so 18-19 years old), I flew across the country to stay with my aunt and her family for a couple weeks. My 3 cousins were 5–10 years younger than me, but pretty awesome kids. I had absolutely NO problem watching them while my aunt was working or so she and my uncle could have some date nights. This story is not about them.
On one of my last days there, I was out in the yard playing with the kids, and we decided to have a water balloon fight. We’re running around, going to war, and suddenly there are 5-6 extra kids in the yard. I stop and ask where they came from. One points across the street and says that his mom said to come play and I’d watch them, so don’t come home for a while. I look up and there’s a couple moms standing on the porch of the house a few down, they see me look, raise a hand in a ‘shoo’ wave, and go inside the house.
Okay, fine, the more the merrier. It would have been nice if they had asked, or even bothered to walk the 100 feet down the street to make sure I wasn’t a psycho, but whatever. We played for another 30-40 minutes until we were out of balloons and out of energy. I sent my cousins in the house to get dried off and cleaned up for dinner.
I went and got my stash of candy for my upcoming trip back home (because what is traveling without a carry-on full of sugar). I told the kids for every 5 pieces of balloon scrap they brought me, they would get a piece of candy. And we had at least 200 balloons (which popped into 1-2 pieces).
I sent those extra kids home packed to the gills with sugar, bouncing off the walls, and talking a mile a minute.
Sure, those moms may have gotten a free babysitter for 45 minutes, but I guarantee I ruined the rest of their afternoon and evening with sugar-wired kids who would devolve into cranky, sugar-crashed kids.
But now we have a yard full of balloon scraps…
I was satisfied.”
