I just watched a movie that brought back a heap of memories when I was in my senior years at high school.
I've always had odd jobs for as long as I can remember growing up, but when I was 14 that's when I really began to pay my own way. I had a job cold calling to sell windows 4 nights a week after school (16hrs a week) and I would often babysit/child mind for a few families we knew at the weekend for a few hours also.
One of the families I used to child mind for lived in a huge old detached house - the kind with a formal dining room, several unused study or living rooms, a library and an an eerie feel surrounding the older part of the building. Anyway, the parents were an odd couple, extremely polite and somewhat formal in their approach to me until of course I was alone with the dad. When that happened, the rules changed.
He was in his early 40s, flew aeroplanes for a living and had perfect posture. A man who held presence in a room when he entered it and had I never been in a room with him on my own to know otherwise; emitted a sense of dignity akin to the characters you read about in a Brontë book.
Every night when they returned he would somehow find a reason for his wife to leave us alone... Had she checked the answering machine, were the children sleeping, wasn't she waiting on an email etc. Almost immediately after she left the room he would invite himself into my personal space and ask me questions about school, my friends and my personal life. On the rare occasion he convinced her to let him drive me home (it was as if she sensed there was something unusual about the way he looked at me), he would always find some reason to lean across, brush my arm, my leg.
At the time I just had him down as a bit of a creep. In hindsight and thinking of some of the conversations he started up on the 'seriously slow' drive back to my house it is pretty clear that he was angling for a green light. A little babysitter action in return for some extra cash. I remember telling my friends and having many a laugh at his expense. He never crossed the line but why did I never tell anyone of consequence about his unusual manner?
Creepy now even thinking about it.
Emily Browning - Sweet Dreams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHuqV9hbNN0
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