2.9. Two Men and a Cradle.

Whooooa boy. Balki and I screwed up big time this week. The stakes keep getting higher in the Windy City, and lives continue to hang in the balance of Balki's increasingly reckless behavior. Last week our lives were at risk; this week we've moved on putting innocent children in mortal peril. We're tap dancing on the razor's edge, dear readers, and it's only a matter of time before we fall into the abyss.

This is a shorter entry, because basically only one thing happened this week; we left an infant in the park to fend for himself. I'll give you two guesses whose fault this is, and I'll even give you a hint: He's from Mypos, and dresses like he's playing one of the Lost Boys in the dinner theater performance of Peter Pan in a Greek insane asylum.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Deep breaths, Cousin Larry. 

So.

For the first time since I started writing this journal (or as I'm sure it will be referred to in the future, "Prosecution Evidence, Item #1") one of the countless victims of Balki and my misadventures came back for seconds. Remember Gina, the perfect stranger with the suspiciously unreliable "Italian" accent who Balki took into our apartment, and who eventually gave birth in the backseat of the 'Stang (that's where babies are supposed to be MADE, lady)? She showed up at the Ritz during one of the rare and fleeting moments Balki checked in for work, asking if he would babysit that very baby, Frankie, this weekend. He said yes without even thinking about running it past me, as is his custom. 

This agreement was worked out seconds before I sauntered in, rocking my rebel brown leather jacket and a longer haircut than usual. Translation: it's the 80s, baby, and I'm the center of the Goddamn universe.

I barely had time to say hello to Gina before she started whining about how she never gets laid anymore; I'm noticing that most of the people I know don't understand how to have conversations like human beings. "How are you, Larry," followed by some warm-up chit chat is typically the format, Gina. Anyway she and Balki launched into this half-assed, probably rehearsed back and forth about how Gina and her husband, Steve, could use a weekend away from the baby so they can pound for a couple nights, and tried to backdoor me into volunteering to babysit.

Well you can call me Bloodhound Larry, cause I'm sniffing out mischief by the hour these days. I saw where they were steering me immediately, and made Balki just be honest with me for one time in his life. He said he thought it would be nice if we babysat Frankie sometime and I was like "of course we can, we're nice people, how about we plan it out around our mutual schedules so it's fair to everyone," and Balki said "how about now" and Gina sprinted for the door.

So now we had a baby at work with us, since we literally cannot put in one single shift without pulling some crap like this. Twinkacetti came in and saw us babysitting while he was paying us to work in his store, and had a look on his face like he was convinced we kidnapped a kid, then just basically said "I don't want to know," and went away.

Twinkacetti. What a jerk, right?

Later on at home, Balki was acting like a stressed out housewife because he's doing laundry and making a bottle at the same time. I'd refused to help him since he lied through his teeth and manipulated me into babysitting, but he parked the kid in front of me long enough for the little rugrat to win me over and make me Balki's accomplice.

Hey, get this; apparently they don't have disposable diapers in Mypos, and Balki doesn't know what they are; so he's been washing them in the community laundry down in the basement. I should get some kind of word out to the super that at least one laundry machine must be either broken or filthy with shredded plastic and baby shit. This pushed me over the edge; I mean, he doesn't know about disposable diapers, fine, I get it, Mypos sucks; but he knows enough about laundry. The fact that someone who didn't recognize that a cheap plastic wrapper with an absorbent pad full of human waste is garbage - and doesn't belong in a washing machine we share with our neighbors - could be solely responsible for a baby all weekend seems criminal. 

I scolded him - hard - about how he basically took the baby no-questions-asked and takes responsibility way too lightly. He even admitted it - Cousin Larry for the win, that's never happened! - then he and the baby both started gently sobbing. I finally agreed to give him childcare advice, which I have a wealth of since I have like 200 younger siblings. The baby proceeded to keep both of us up all night; every few minutes he would wake up and cry, and we took turns trying to chill him out; come three-am we were both on the verge of insanity. 

I've always believed that inspiration rides on the unstable line between sanity and madness; and it was in that moment I remembered I'm an amazing singer, and I could soothe the little rascal to sleep with the power of melody. I sang rockabye baby, which caused Balki to freak out about the baby-in-peril lyrics (FORESHADOWING) so he started singing the Brady Bunch theme song, and Frankie seemed to really dig it. I joined in, because Balki needed a low to harmonize with his high or the jam would've sounded like garbage, and not in my house bro. My apartment is a sonic temple. Baby giggles himself to sleep. Babysitting job nailed. 

So that was pretty much our adventure in babysitting, kind of crazy at first but we got the hang of it. Short entry this week.

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Oh, right, somehow we managed to switch babies at the park.

The next day we were both pretty sleep deprived when we took Frankie to the park, and somehow swapped him out with a little girl. I don't remember how this happened and it's not entirely important. We went into an insane panic, having kidnapped a child and abandoned another one hours before his mother returned for him. We rushed back to the park with the kid we stole, and scoured the place; but Frankie was gone. It didn't make sense that another parent wasn't doing the same thing, until Balki helpfully mentioned that there was a country-crossing couple in a Winnebago with a baby, and they probably drove off with Frankie. 

Even if that's the case, unless these were criminally negligent parents I couldn't imagine they got much further than the parking lot before realizing the mistake that took us literally several hours to discover; I mean, do they leave the baby in its stroller in a moving Winnebago? 

So Gina showed up right on cue, and I felt my bloodstream produce some kind of adrenaline rush that mimicked the effects of a dinner plate-sized dose of cocaine. My eyes bugged out. My hair stood on end. I did not speak; I screamed. I did not walk; I scurried. I kept cutting Balki off before he could explain what happened (and I could tell that he was lining up his excuse to put the blame squarely on me) by screaming over him that we wanted to keep Frankie around a little longer, then told Gina she looked like garbage and threw her in the bathroom so I could think. 

So so smooth.

Another knock came at the door. We assumed it must have been her truck-driving husband Steve and feared that he would murder us, but instead it was the mother of the kid we kidnapped. She had Frankie with her, thank God. This chick Linda Richards - yeah, it was the Winnebago lady - was weirdly cool about the whole thing, enough so that I suspect it was actually her fault and she was trying to get away with something. 

Wanna hear something screwed up? We weren't sure by looking at the baby's face that it was Frankie, so we took off his diaper and got a look at his wang to confirm it. I'm not making this up and I'm not sure why I'm telling you about it, but I'm sure it has something to do with the complicated psychology of guilt. Anyway yeah, it was Frankie's wang all right - which I should mention is impressive - and apparently we've spent more time looking at it than his face because we're sick people. 

We let Gina out of the bathroom, and per usual, got off Scot-free for our shenanigans after several close calls. We had a heart to heart about how much we appreciate our moms now, because having kids is tough. I turned on the TV, and guess what: the Brady Bunch was on. As we finally relaxed, watched the opening credits and sang along to the theme song, there was only one thought on my mind:

I'd like to get a look at those Brady kids' wangs. You know. Just to know.