I may be the world’s worst Grandpa, and at this point, I’m okay with that.

So, for somewhere between the last two days and 300 years, I’ve been babysitting my two youngest grand-daughters, Charlotte, age five, and Sharon, age four. Two of the sweetest, most well-behaved little girls in the world, two of the brightest lights of my life . . . and I can’t wait for them to go home. I’m exhausted, and they’re exhausting. See, it’s VBS (Vacation Bible School) week at our church, and they both wanted to go. Since all their parents work nights, we figured it would just be easier if they stayed with us.

It was true, but I have to ask now, “Easier for who?” Certainly not me! I’ll admit it; I like the peace and quiet. I like not having to talk to anyone all day, and not having anyone talk to me all day. I like doing things at my own pace, when I want (usually in a last-minute fluff-and-stuff scramble just before Jess gets home from work so that she thinks I did more than stare at the Facebook and play Spider Solitaire all day). I’ve found that you can’t do that with little girls running around like Visigoths plundering the Coliseum (a more apt comparison than you might think. If you doubt me, ask any parents with small kids.).

No, no, no. You’ve got to do everything on THEIR schedule (you can forget about ever being one step ahead of them). Nope, from the time their giggling little voices giving orders to the dogs in the living room wakes you up, to the third time you tell them to GET BACK INTO BED, THERE’S NO WAY YOU CAN HAVE TO PEE AGAIN ALREADY!, you’re just scrambling to keep up. At this point, I’m just grateful that my wife, the wise and blissfully employed Jess, told them they have to stay in bed until it’s at least daylight out.

Now you know me, I like to get up around the crack of noon (I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like, but it is something I shoot for every day possible). This morning, the giggling and peeking in the door started at 6:45 a.m. I’d forgotten that God even turned the air on that early. So I get up, and stagger to the bathroom. I’m still on the can when it starts: “Grandpa, whatcha doin’? Grandpa, can we watch TV? Grandpa, are you pooping or peeing? Grandpa, what’s that smell? Grandpa, what are we doing today? Grandpa, where’s my pants?” I mean, I haven’t even found my own pants yet, I’m still trying to get my eyes to focus. I don’t need this kind of pressure this early in the morning. I’ve reached a point in my life where the pressure in my bladder first thing in the morning is almost more than I can handle. Also, it’s just unnerving to be sitting there on the can, face in your hands, drawers around your ankles, trying to brace yourself for the day, and suddenly hear an angelic pair of voices right in you ear saying “Grandpa, we brushed our teeth already,” and pry your bleary eyes open to see two little girls staring at you from about six inches away, their pajamas covered from neck to waist in sparkly kids toothpaste.

And then there’s the hurt look in their little faces when you tell them, “You need to get out of here. Grandpa doesn’t need any help.” Like they think they’re going to miss something. OOOOOH, Grandpa doesn’t love us! He won’t even let us watch him wipe his butt!!!” These kids really need to learn some things about the need for privacy and personal space. I suppose it could be that they’ve never had any themselves, but still.

Did I mention how much I love peace and quiet? Oh yeah, those are long gone. I had forgotten how incredibly loud little girls are. These kids don’t have indoors voices and outdoor voices. They have stranger voices and familiar voices. When they’re talking to strangers, like the VBS teachers, they’ve got these cute, adorable, and above all quiet, little-girl voices (often with a lithp that just puts them off the chart, adorably speaking) that make them sound just oh-so-darling. When they’re with Their people, they’ve got voices that can break glass, and everything they say is at full volume. IT’S LIKE THEY CAN ONLY SPEAK IN ALL CAPS OR SOMETHING! Unless, of course, they’re in trouble, like when they feed the dog their breakfast despite being told specifically not to, just 30 seconds before, in which their voice turns into an unintelligible mumble of denial. The adorable lisp turns into a four-star speech impediment. It makes asking them, “What did I tell you!?” just another source of frustration, because the standard reply sounds something like, “idinmeantodudetookitold’mnottos’notmyfault.” and usually ends with something that sounds remarkably like “bullshit” just after they turn their head away so you can’t see their lips.

Take my advice. Don’t fall for it. It’s a trap. You think you heard “bullshit”, so naturally, you respond, “WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME?” They, of course, look you right in the eye, and say perfectly clearly, “Nothing,” and all of a sudden, you’re the bad guy. Not only have you had a hand in raising this foul-mouthed little villain, you know there’s a better-than-even chance that they learned both the word, and the behavior from you (don’t believe me, take a step back and watch yourself next time you find yourself on the losing side of an argument with your spouse).

Then there’s the fact that they are only capable of movement if their operating at full volume. If they don’t have anything in particular to say, they’re happy with a simple, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Who knew such little lungs could have such high capacity?

OOOH, and let’s not forget the incessant singing. It doesn’t matter that they don’t know the words (or even the tune), they’ll sing it anyway. Everything they sing sounds like a drunk 50-year-old singing “Louie, Louie” at a Karaoke bar while refusing to read the screen because, “They don’t got the words right. I’ve been listening to this song all my life! I don’t need no stinking bouncing ball!”

Of course, if no song springs to their tiny, still-forming mind, they’re perfectly content to just sing whatever you just told them, which is how, this morning, I was trying to get all the kids and dogs inside for breakfast, and ended up with Sharon doing some kind of Mick Jagger-style strut singing tunelessly (and out of tune) “EHHHVAAA-BOTTTTTY, GET INNNN-SIIIIIIDE!” over and over again. Trust me, it did not help. I listen to a lot of Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Beatles, Lucero, Tom Petty, Todd Snider, and Stone Coyotes, so our dogs know what good music sounds like, and they were not going anywhere near something that sounded like that. It was really quite painful, and there’s just no way to tell a four-year-old that she can’t carry a tune in a bucket without hurting her feelings (I’m a terrible Grandpa, but I’m not a jerk.)

A couple quick notes on the care and feeding of little girls. I know when I was a kid, any kid (boy or girl) who ate creamy peanut butter and insisted on having the crust cut off was immediately deemed a sissy,  and strongly suspected of severe Kootification. Now, apparently, it’s de rigueur. Apparently, so is the complete refusal to eat anything with any type of flavor, substance, or any of the things that make food worth eating. I kind of think that Charlotte would happily eat nothing but drywall, as long as I fixed it with creamy drywall mud.

And then of course there’s the whole trying to live up to the adult feminine expectations. As my wife, the reasonably-but-not-overly appearance conscious Jess, was hastily ripping a brush through the tangled hair of the fruit-of-my-loins-once-removed, she asked, “Did you brush their hair this morning?” Of course not. I didn’t brush mine either. That’s why I have a hat. I would have thought that she’d be happy that they weren’t still in their pj’s (as a result of that last minute fluff and stuff, of course).

Also, little girls need to be entertained. When I was a kid, an adult entertained children by telling them, “Go outside!”, and bang, their work was done. Not so much any more. Now it’s all, “Play a game with me, push me on the swing, pull me up the slide, catch me sliding down the pole.” There’s no freaking end to it. It’s like they’re little, easily-bored black holes of attention. And God help you if it looks like the other one might be getting more. They’re worse than IRS auditors, scrupulously making sure that each of them gets exactly the same number of swing pushes, slide pulls, pole catches, etc. and at exactly the same level of push-pull-catchitude.

Finally, I let them drive the golf cart. Since Sharon lives right next door and has lots of chances to drive it, she decided to let Charlotte do all the driving (I did mention that they were both very sweet, right?), and drive it, Charlotte did. Actually, she did very well for a five-year-old who’d never done it before. I was pretty proud of her. Fortunately, we have about 20 acres that are reasonably golf cart friendly, so we weren’t just driving in a circle (well, we were, but it was a really big circle). I also quickly figured out that Sharon wasn’t motivated purely by altruism. She cleverly realized that, with Charlotte doing all the hard part (like not driving into trees), she herself was free to stand on the back of the cart and shriek shrilly into my ear every time we hit a bump, which out here is approximately every three-and-a-half seconds, no matter where you’re at. It made for a phenomenally spine-jarring, ear-splitting few hours. They, of course, loved every bump, bounce, and screechalicious minute. We rode that thing for three days yesterday. Thank God the battery finally wound down today.

Now, I’ve been trying to keep them away from the TV as much as I can, but finally, today, I threw in the towel. We watched Penguins of Madagascar (which was actually pretty funny), and then I put on Sherman and Mr. Peabody (or something like that. Let’s face it, it could have been Pulp Fiction, as long as it kept them entertained), and came in here to write. Okay, full disclosure, I’m not writing so much as hiding at this point.

P.S. The movie ended a little bit ago, and the neighbor kid (another five-year-old girl) came over to kill time ’til we all go to VBS. They’re all in the spare bedroom playing dress-up. Either that or trying to break Pink Floyd’s decibel record. Possibly both.

Grandkids. I love ’em dearly, I’d do anything for ’em, and I’m sooooo glad they go home tonight.