Wednesday, July 23, 2003

I had a really disturbing babysitting experience today, and I'm going to write about it because I kind of need to get it all out (hah - do I sound like Dr. Phil or what?) - seriously, though - this wasn't cool.

I got to the house right on time, at 7:45 in the morning and rang the doorbell. No one answered. I waited, and rang it about 4 more times in the next 15 minute period. Then all of a sudden the family's dog comes out from around the corner. He hung around me for a bit...doing his doggy thing, and then *Mr.E comes out from behind the opposite corner about five minutes later. His dog runs straight to him, and is totally happy too see him, and *MR.E PULLS THE BELT OFF HIS PANTS AND STARTS WHIPPING THE DOG WITH IT. I don't think he saw me, because he was just going at it - hitting the dog and swearing at him and yelling curse words I don't think I've ever heard before. Then he notices me standing there and starts offering all kinds of explanations as to what he was doing and why. It really freaked me out. Call me a crybaby, but I had tears in my eyes from the absolute shock of what I'd just seen.

The worst part is that this guy has always been so nice and friendly. He's so smart and opinionated and just an all-around nice person. I've seen him flip out once before, about a year ago. He didn't hit anybody or anything, but he was racing around his house absolutely fuming - yelling swear words and insulting people and all sorts of things. This was in front of me, and of his children, who were 3 and 8 at the time. I really didn't know what to do about it. I felt like such an idiot just standing there (probably resembling a codfish, with my mouth wide open and everything.) but there was nothing I could say... there was nothing I wanted to say.

This whole thing is making me wonder about a lot of things. I don't want to jump to any conclusions about the kind of person he is or the things that he does, but....it just really makes me wonder.

Hailey spazzed at 12:00:00 a.m.

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