Kids are the most expensive form of entertainment. But tonight, The Parents have gone to a Couple Spa Treatment leaving me with just the honk of the car as if to say, Ha ha, sucks to you! Take care of Keolo and Kaira for us! Apparently, they have overused these kids, gotten bored stiff, and moved on to the next level: running away.

For someone who hates kids, babysitting would be some kind of torture. And babysitting for kids like Keolo and Kaira would take you to the level of self-mutilation.

Keolo is an eight-year-old squat and pudgy little boy whose favorite past time is shooting tiny wet balls of tissue at your hair. These balls of tissue paper, he'd rip them into smaller squares, roll each one in his mouth, load them into his canon soda straw sticky with saliva, and fire them at your neck. The feeling is similar to having a giant blind fly smacking at your nape after it's dodged through raindrops on the way to your window.

Kaira, on the other hand, is a four-year-old princess wanna-be suffering from Attention Deficit Syndrome. She's the same kid who said, Mommy, can I smoke now? The same kid who, after gloating at the pictures in an FHM magazine, was struck with a profound life-changing realization that she doesn't want to be a supermodel any more. She wants to be a porn star.

Already, the two kids are in my room, jumping on a trampoline that happens to be my bed. Instead of whipping out my slapstick and have them play horsey-horsey, I grab two books from the shelf and make them read. To Kaira, I have to point the words and read them out loud.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss, I begin, sitting on the bed beside my future porn star.

At the head of the bed, my pillow is beginning to smell of Keolo's butt. Wrapped taut around his giant head is Saint Nicolas' red hat, forced to fit that I had to cut a small slit on one side. In one white, fat hand, he is holding a chocolate donut with colored sprinkles on top, poised to be gnashed and mashed and pulverized in his cavernous mouth.

Say, why do donuts have holes in them?

His idea of a vegetable is french fries. Beyond that, they're just inedible yucky plants. With the other hand, he flips through a Did You Know? kid's magazine laid beneath his globoid belly and feminish boy-tits. This Christmas Holidays it may look like I had a change of heart. But really, I don't.

The coloring story book I am holding is green and red. At the front cover is the conspiratorial smile of The Grinch. This is The Grinch, I point out at Kaira. He is a mutated life-sized rat who hates Christmas.

I love this story for the same reason that I hate Christmas. This is The Grinch. This is me. You can't tell us apart.

A babysitter is a person hired for a few hours doing nanny job. Her sole responsibility is keeping the kids away from knives and matches, and ruining the expensive furniture. It doesn't involve contaminating their minds with useless words.

Tita, Keolo says through chocolate-stained teeth, Did you know that mosquitoes are attracted to people who've just eaten bananas? Cool! Awesome! His mouth pries open, exposing all his molar cavities, and snaps into a large bite of the donut.

I taught him that favorite word, Awesome. I find that my vocabulary is contagious to kids. Every time he's amazed he says, Awesome! Lookit my anti-gravity car: it sucks in air while rolling on the wall. Awesome! Lookit the wet bunch of tissue I hurled in the bathroom: it stuck to the ceiling! Awesome! Lookit my butt in the toilet: it stuck to the rim! Awesome!

I tell him, Then why aren't mosquitoes attracted to monkeys?

This makes him pause chewing, then he says, They haf fick fur and they schtink!

Very good, I say. Just like you. Ever wonder why you don't have mosquito bites?

Keolo and me, we grew up on violent cartoons. Our current favorite is The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. I relate to Mandy, and he to Billy. Before we shared this passion, just the sight of me prompts him into yelling, Get out! Get out of this room! Then he'd shove me out of the room, and slam and lock the door.

It was humiliating. I hate kids. And kids hate me. But that's just the first impression. The Grinch is a clever manipulator.

I have mosquito bites, Tita, the future prostitute says, pitching attention. She rolls up one leg of her pajamas and exposes a brown vampirefly bite on her right calf. This I ignore, fearing she'd strip and finger-point the mosquito bites all over her body.

I flip a page and read aloud about the Whos down in Who-ville who liked Christmas a lot. But The Grinch, I tell her, he lives just north of Who-ville and Christmas he liked not!

But why do Gwinch hates Chwistmas? Kaira says sadly.

It could be, I read right off the page, his head wasn't screwed on just right.

It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were screwed tight.

But I think that the most likely reason of all

May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

Awesome! booms Pudgy. I nicknamed Keolo that. Lookit this! he says. Did you know that the symbol for love used to be the liver, not the heart? Awesome!

Kuya, Kaira shouts at him, Shut off!

Why the liver, Tita? Pudgy continues. Why not the brain or the kidneys?

I don't know, I say. I mean, why not the anus? It's the most important part of the body. Sew it tight and everything will shut down and the body will explode.

I laugh at my own wittiness. The kids just look at me mute and stupid.

Tita, Pudgy says. What's an anus?

I'm not doing them any harm, am I? These words are just vocabulary. Forgettable. Weak. Powerless. Empty. I say the anus is the favorite body part of a sodomist.

What's a sodomist?

It's a three-syllable word. A kid's brain is equipped to remember only two. Just to shut him up I say it's a bugger, a person who loves collecting bugs and insects. For a second I imagine Pudgy wanting to be an entomologist some day. Right below his graduation photo in his high school yearbook it says, When I grow up I want to be a successful bugger.

What do bugs and insects have to do with the anus?

Oh, Christ.

I leaf through the next page of The Grinch story and read about the Whos hanging mistletoe wreaths and stockings. The Evil Mutated Rat says, I must find a way to stop Christmas from coming! I point at the houses in Who-ville and explain to Kaira they're giant eggplants half-buried in snow.

What's that? Kaira points at the fuzzy lines curling skyward from the eggplants' stem. I tell her they're smoke. That's what you call a chimney. The couples inside are heating up. Just so they'd multiply instead of freeze and die.

Being a babysitter isn't all that bad. They think I'm doing them a favor. Let's see who's in charge. You kids are a clean slate. Let's paint you your future. Let's paint you with words.

Pudgy chews audibly like a pig and wipes the donut crumbles off the glossy page. Then he laughs. His tongue is a thick carpet of brown archaeological legend. Did you know, he says in a half-snort, that chocolate syrup is often used as fake blood in movies? And there he goes again: Awesome! At some point you get immune to the word it loses its meaning.

Pudgy is a carnivore and a glutton at heart. During meals he'd stuff his mouth to the lip until his cheeks are about to burst. With his tongue, he'd rotate the food once, then swallow immediately. While he eats only meat, Kaira only eats vegetables. My teeth, Kaira once said, the meat gets stuck in the holes.

In a split second I wanted them to smother themselves with chocolate syrup and play dead by the gate outside. The Hysterical Parents will find them lifeless and have a heart attack. Then the kids would spring into zombies, followed by wrenching butt-slaps in the living room. But it's Christmas; I'm making myself extra nice and calm and composed and babysitterly.

Kaira turns to the next page and I read about the Whos' Christmas Eve celebration. The Grinch couldn't stand the noise. He couldn't stand the feast, the Who-pudding, and the rare Who-roast-beaf. And then the Whos do something The Grinch loathes most of all: the Whos sing Christmas songs! Why, of course, The Grinch must stop Christmas from coming. But how?

What's he going to do now? Kaira says.

Maybe he'll nuke fart bombs at Who-ville, I say. Just like how Kuya farts when he shoos you away.

Pudgy farts like an elephant. Every time he farts, you'll cover your nose while wheezing in laughter. Then you'll lose oxygen and drop unconscious.

Pudgy is licking the brown dust off his stubby fingers.

Get this, he says. Did you know that the world's most expensive coffee comes from monkey poop? Eww! Gross!

Kuya, you're disgusting! Kaira says.

Eating poop is okay, I fib. Just look at dogs. Monkeys do the same. They eat their own poop when they don't have anything else to eat. Poop is the height of food mineral concentration. You get to eat the recycled vitamins and minerals, I say with much authority, without the fats and carbohydrates.

Tita, you're kidding! Pudgy's eyes are wild and agitated.

Remember The Jetsons? I say. Remember those food tablets that turn into roasted chicken, or spaghetti, or hamburgers? Well, poop's just like that.

Disgusting! Pudgy says.

Like, eww! little miss stripper says.

These are the same kids who'd pick their nose and eat their booger without disgust. What kind of monster would teach them that? What does it taste like, I asked Kaira once. She said it tastes like dirt.

Off the page, The Grinch wears a red bathrobe and a red sleeping hat, and fastens improvised antlers on his dog's head. He slides into the Whos' chimneys in the middle of the night and filches all the presents, decorations, stockings, lights, food, and the Christmas tree into his empty sack. Right when he's shoving the Christmas tree up the chimney, a tiny Who catches The Grinch in the act.

{ I'll get back to this. }

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