The Baby-Sitter with Eyes like Cameras
People often complain of Big Brother and his invasive intrusion into their everyday lives, in the form of security cameras and microphones.
However, offer someone a million dollars (or even much less) to star in their own reality television show and they'll sign up right away and help with the installation of cameras.
There is no reality in reality television. It's planned, written, edited, produced, and glorified. We want the world to know our name but we don't really want the world to know what we're like.
We don't do certain things when we know we're being watched. We don't always know who's watching us or what they're thinking.
Except Jenni. She knows who's watching. God is watching.Jenni woke up early and had to pee. She hated the fact that she always had to pee in the morning. When that happened, she would usually walk to the bathroom half asleep and forget that there were cameras in there. At every possible angle, too.
She crept quietly to the bathroom. She closed the door and grabbed a towel off of the shower rack. She sat down and draped the towel over her legs, letting it touch the floor at each end. She pulled down her pink pastel panties and peed as silently as she could.
Sometimes she couldn't help but pee loudly, at other times you couldn't hear her pee at all. She wonders why that is.
“God is watching you, everywhere,” her mother reminded her last night before she left on a weekend trip.
“Even in the bathroom?” Jenni had asked.
“Everywhere,” her mother replied sternly.
“How?” Jenni asked.
“Well, he's God, of course. If a man kills another man, stood at the gates of heaven and was being judged by God and God asks him if he ever killed a man. No, he says. But then God pulls out a picture or plays him a video of him killing the other man. God knows everything and doesn't forget. He has eyes like cameras. ”
Eyes like cameras, she let her mind free think for a while. Probably like compound eyes. God is a fruit fly except with an infinite lifespan. I'd still try and squish him.
She wiped under the towel, dropped that into the toilet, and pulled up her panties. She hung the towel back on the shower rack, flushed the toilet, and washed her hands with birthday cake scented soap.
Or maybe God is a man in a room with walls and walls of television monitors. Watching everything.
A candy sprinkle came loose from the soap and fell down the drain. Right on top of the camera, noted Jenni.
Jenni took the soap and dug out more candy sprinkles with her “Enchanting Mistress” painted nails (dark green with silver glitter). She let those fall down the sink and onto the camera as well.
Jenni likes to play games with God. Sometimes she sits on the couch and reads for hours. But then, she realized He could see what she was reading. She doesn't read the fun parts of her mother's romance novels anymore. She doesn't watch much television anymore. If God insists upon watching her day and night, she's not going to make it worth His while. Hopefully, He will realize how boring she is and leave her alone.
She sits on the couch for several minutes, watching the cameras watch her. She can't see the cameras but she knows they're there. Sometimes she even takes a roll of packaging tape out of the desk drawer, puts a strip on her skin and pulls it off. Cleans off the dead, dirty skin cells.
But today, she was not reading the magazine that lay on the coffee table or picking off dead skin cells from her nose. She was not watching the television either when there was a loud knock at the front door. She was being boring on purpose. If God wants to watch what she's doing every single second of the day, he shouldn't be entertained by it.
She opened the door. “Who are you?” Jenni asked with wide eyes. A tall man wearing a trench coat took off the cowboy's hat he was wearing, and shook her hand.
“Just call me the Fixer. I've come to uninstall the cameras in your home. They'll be gone for good at last. Are your parents home?”
“No.”
“Where are they?”
“They'll be back tomorrow morning.”
“Who's watching you?”
“God is, of course,” Jenni found this to be a perfectly, reasonable answer.
“Well, it'll only be three minutes. A second over and my service charge will be free. Do you have a watch?”
“No...but we got an egg timer!” Jenni raced up back the steps and into the kitchen to get the chicken shaped timer. The Fixer stepped in, set his box down and picked out a few tools.
“Are you ready?” he yelled up the stairs.
“Yes,” Jenni replied. “I set it at three minutes. Ready...set...go!”
The Fixer walked up the stairs and started with the bathroom. The tools were unlike anything Jenni has seen in her garage. The Fixer worked fast and she tried to watch what he was doing. “Don't get too close, these tools are mighty powerful,” the Fixer warned. Jenni listened and didn't question because what does she know about tools? But then again, she isn't one to question.
The Fixer showed Jenni the cameras he pulled out tiny little things that look like mechanical eyes. While he worked fast, Jenni knew there was way too many cameras to find all throughout the house. No way he'll be able to finish in time, she lamented.
The Fixer entered Jenni's room. He took out a camera from each corner of the wall, plus even one from a teddy bear that she didn't know that existed.
The Fixer started to walk into the living room when the plastic chicken started clucking in the kitchen.
“It's free! It's free!” screamed Jenni.
“So it is,” smiled the Fixer. “It'll be a minute or so more and then I'll be out of your way.” The Fixer took down a still life painting of a field of dandelions and took out a small camera that was stuck behind its frame.
The Fixer scanned the newspaper before getting out of the truck to greet his next client. No signs of the lion. However, there was an informative, if humorous, how-to article on what to do with the abundance of dandelions growing this season. There was a recipe for dandelion tea that the Fixer tore off and stored between the pages his log book. He finished writing, closed the book, and then drove off to his next client.
Name: Jenni Boule
Location: Duluth
Think: God is baby-sitting her by the means of hidden cameras.
Thing: Cameras installed in every crevice in house.
Status: fixed pending as is
Comments: Cameras uninstalled. May need psychiatric evaluation.