Alrighty, here goes: the story of Narcissus and Echo is as follows. Narcissus is out hunting deer in the forest when he spots a young nymph named Echo. But wait for it, there's a story within a story, and now we're introduced to Echo. She is a rather promiscuous nymph whose only downfall is she talks too much. However, one day Hera caught Zeus frolicking among the nymphs (because Zeus does far too much frolicking for his own good, if you know what I mean) so Echo goes to chatter off Hera's ear so Zeus can get away. Hera, sensing she was being played, took away Echo's voice as revenge and made it so that Echo could only repeat back what others said to her. So....like an echo, hint, hint...get it?? Now back to the original story! Echo falls hopelessly in love with Narcissus the moment she sees him but because of Hera's doing, she physically cannot speak to him. Bummer man, poor Echo can't catch a break! So Echo proceeds to do what an rational wood nymph would do and that would be to stalk the guy you're madly in love with through the forest. ~~skipping boring fluff~~ Anyway, after some time, Narcissus loses track of his hunting buddies and yells into the forest, "Let's get together!" and now our dear Echo is on Cloud 9. She jumps out of the bushes, surprising Narcissus (did she forget he was hunting?? Probably with scary weapons?? Never sneak up on someone when they're holding something that could kill you!?) and she screams, "Let's get together!" Now, our little wood nymph has tons of self-confidence and is ready to get down with Narcissus, despite the fact she stalked him for god knows how long! But Narcissus just goes, "Nuh-uh! I ain't havin any of that! I'd rather die." Echo, when are you going to realize Narcissus is just a big jerk? Apparently, not soon enough because she runs away weeping and hides in a cave until she withers away to nothing but her own voice. Narcissus on the other hand, rejects every other suitor that comes after him until one day he stumbles upon a pool of water and upon looking at his reflection, he falls in love. But this is where we find out just how big of a doofus Narcissus is because he doesn't realize it is his own reflection he has fallen in love with. When he speaks, his reflection speaks, when he smiles, his reflection smiles - do you not see the trend there, Narcissus?!? What a dum-dum. In the end, he finally figures out it's jus thin, and there's no magical handsome man interested in him, but instead of leaving, he stays because he's much too obsessed with himself. So, he dies. Boo-hoo.
Now,
I can't speak much about narcissistic vs. altruistic people, but what I can do is share an embarrassing story from my day. Hopefully, you can learn a thing or too, or at least be entertained as I desperately draw at strings and attempt to compare the story of Echo and Narcissus to my embarrassment of a life as I try to somewhat keep with the assignment.
Here goes.
Picture it, it's a normal day. The sun is out, the birds are chirping, you don't want to kill yourself. All's good. then BAM! everything goes to hell. That's pretty much how my day went.
So I'm babysitting for this new family, right? The parents are at parent-teacher conferences and should be back in less than an hour. Piece of cake, right? yeah no WRONG.
Can you tell how agitated I am about all of this? If not, then just keep reading.
So the parents leave. And then the little boy starts crying. His mom had mentioned that he was still super attached to her and would start crying after they left, so I was expecting it. I try to comfort him but oh no, he bawls even harder as I try and get closer to him and then runs up to his room and slams the door in my face. He wouldn't let me open it and kept crying even harder. Glad to know that people's first reactions when they see me is to burst into tears and run and hide -.-
Fast forward 10 minutes, and lots of coaxing, but hey, the kid's finally out. We play some hide-and-seek, and the little girls devilishly good at hiding, and I'm too big for all the good hiding places. It wasn't a fair game if you ask me. But then again, no one is.
Hide-and-seeks gets boring, or counting to twenty gets too difficult; either way we decide to color. Fun, right? Kids do it all the time. Oh, have I mentioned this is my first time ever with these kids? Keep that in mind for this next part.
So we color, and we color, and we have our markers, and our pastels, and our glitter pens, and everything since Crayola was pretty much invented, when the girl says she needs to use the restroom. No biggie. She does her biz, and we color again. We have the colored pencils, and the jelly pens, and the pastels and....
And then all hell breaks loose.
Did I mention we're still coloring? Apparently it takes a long time to color a picture of a princess, even if you're not staying within the lines?? So anyway, I look over, and water is literally seeping out the bottom of the door. I drop what I'm doing, yank the door open, and immediately step into the biggest puddle of toilet water imaginable. The toilet is flooding. And it's not even slowing.
Everything's wet.
And it keeps overflowing.
There aren't any towels.
And it keeps overflowing.
There's no goshdang plunger in any of the three fricken bathrooms in the house!!!!
And it keeps overflowing.
Little girl is crying because she thinks it's her fault. It's really not.
And it keeps overflowing.
Boy slips in puddle. Starts crying too, because his pants are wet.
And it keeps overflowing.
I start freaking and ripping my hair out.
And it keeps overflowing, because apparently it wasn't going to be done until the entire reservoir for Lexington was utterly drained.
So, no one was picking up my calls and text messages. I have two crying kids, an overflowing bathroom, and no plunger. Shoot me. But please, not before I get my gold medal for best babysitter of the year. Anyone who wants an autograph, I'm sure I'll have plenty of spare time, ya know, now that I've been blacklisted on all the nanny blogs and whatnot.
Then, as if it couldn't get any worse, what happens? It fricken gets worse. The flooding is so bad, it's now seeping through the ceiling and into the basement. So now I've got two puddles, two crying kids, and what would surely be two angry parents to deal with. Again, I'll take that gold medal any time now....
I think about calling 911, but that's stupid and they'd just laugh in my face. They're rude like that sometimes... I do the only logical thing I can think of in my panic ridden moment of hysteria and *CAUTION DISTURBING IMAGE* I stick my hand right in the toilet bowl and try to pull the clog out. Yeah....it was stupid. Yeah....I learned my lesson. Yeah....I boiled my hand for hours after I got home.
The next part is so traumatizing that I still haven't recovered from it. To summarize, because I don't think I can bear going into detail, what happened was pretty much this: I ran to the neighbor's house asking for their plunger, but instead, when they hear how bad it is, I steal them away from their comfortable and clean smelling home into the toilet hell hole that was occurring across the street. They shut off the water, and then we start cleaning up the mess. Most of the damage hit the downstairs because of course, right underneath the bathroom and the leakage is a huge lamp and its seeping out of it's sides so profusely that I worry I am going to screw up the electricity for this poor family. Boy, they had no idea what they were signing up for when they hired me.
So then, the parents walk in right as we're cleaning up. Can you say awkward enough times?? They were shocked, sure, but they weren't pissed. Thank god, because I probably would have started crying right there in their living room.
How is it that one 5-foot, 90-pound girl can cause so much damage in the span of half and hour?
My life... It's like it's one big sickening joke, that just exists to make other people laugh.
I hope you guys laughed at least.
Cuz I sure wasn't at the time.
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