Dogs, Flyswatters and Soap. OH MY!

Dogs, Flyswatters and soap oh my!
Let's see my 30th blog...that's a lot. I still have a lot to write about and it's hard to pick just one thing. I have SO many memories of my childhood because it was so much FUN! Life was good. It still is but now that I'm an adult with a family I have a lot of responsibility and I know what's going on in the world around me. So we try our best to still have fun and I think it's going pretty well:)
I thought about our babysitter today and with that thought came a lot of memories. Her name was Charlotte and she had a husband named Donny and three teenage kids, two girls and a boy. There was also an old old old old (did I say old?) lady...well more like dragon that lived under the floor boards...okay okay in an apartment in the basement. Charlotte's house was not fun. She had old plastic toys most of which were dull and brown and missing pieces. Looking through the toy box is comparable with you as an adult looking in the refrigerator several times within seconds hoping to find some new delicious snack that magically appeared while you shut the door. Same outcome at Charlotte's...sigh and shut the lid. Thankfully we were not the only inmates. There were others! some younger some older. Some kids were lucky and only had to come after school. Besides the lack of toys we also had a sweltering backyard to play in. Her backyard was fenced in and once again was devoid of toys. I think I remember a tennis ball and a racket. There was only one tree in her yard and that was next to the neighbor's 6 ft. fence. On the other side of this fence lived a snarling barking dog that wanted to eat us. So we would sit under the tree in the shade and listen to the dog next door scratch at the ground and fence trying it's best to get to us and rip us to shreds. We would make up stories about the dog or dare each other to throw something over the fence. I'm happy to say that no one was ever eaten. When Charlotte was done making us suffer in the heat she would call us in for lunch that our parents packed in lunch boxes. Inside those lunchboxes were our thermoses full of heavenly Kool-aid tropical fruit punch. We were dieing for a drink! Charlotte made it very clear that we had to eat all our food before we could drink and if we drank it all before our food was eaten we weren't' allowed anything else to drink! (I do believe this is why I don't drink until I'm done w/my dinner to this day) There was a girl named Terry who was Jeff's age so like 7 and she was fearless. She wasn't afraid of the old lady in the basement but we were. Sometimes Charlotte would make us go down into the basement where all her shelves were stacked with stuff. The old lady lived on the other half and if we weren't quiet she would come out and hold up her fly swatter and threaten us with it. One day Terry rebelled and knocked on the old lady's door. We all ran behind some shelves and out came the lady and chased Terry around swatting her legs. Talk about Frightening:) Another time we were put in the basement I had to go pee really really bad but I was afraid to go upstairs to the bathroom because Charlotte had told us to stay put. All the kids were urging me to go up...I made it half way up the basement stairs and then couldn't hold it any longer:( poor me...I had to go up and tell her what I had done. So she huffed at me but said I should have gone upstairs. I think I should have told my parents all this stuff a long time ago but I didn't.
Overall Charlotte was a nice lady but times were different and that was normal...I guess. Charlotte's husband was tall, thin and white haired. He LOVED to tickle me and I HATED him tickling me. He thought it was the funniest thing. I remember one time my parents had to leave us there over night because Nanny had died. I remember wanting to cry my eyes out or wish myself into my parents car as they pulled away. I clung to my mom's leg as Danny stretched his arms out for me as he sat on the couch making tickling motions with his hands and laughing. (TRUST ME MEN, If you are teasing a little girl or boy and they don't smile or they look afraid...it's because THEY ARE! so don't do that.) For some reason he thought I liked him tickling me. He didn't mean any harm by it but it bothered me. That night Charlotte gave us a bath:( I still remember the smell of the soap she used...it was a big blue bar of soap...and later in life when I used it again I had flashbacks of seeing that Coast bar coming at me in Charlotte's hand. She got us squeaky clean and ready for bed. We slept on the floor of her son Kevin's bedroom floor. After church we came back to her house where the girls Donna and Lisa were painting their nails and watching the Dukes of Hazard (that was the only thing we liked about the weekend) Lisa had a sewing needle in her hand and she showed me how she could put it through her skin without it hurting her. She threatened to hold me down and put it through mine next. Somehow we managed to last the weekend and we were never so happy to get back home. I'm thinking that Nanny Cam was a great invention:)