Bad Babysitter

This posting is about 2 of my favorite things. Food and My Nephew Matthew.  Matthew is my brother's oldest son and is just a great person. He's nice, funny and has a huge heart. Love the kid. Matthew is 24 years old but this story takes place in 1989 when he was 18 months old and I was 24. I was a single goofball living in the city and my brother and his wife were living in the suburbs of Chicago.  My brother asked me if I could watch Matthew one Saturday afternoon while he and his wife went out for about 6 hours. Of course, I said no problem. I loved seeing the little man as much as I could. So I arrive at my brother's house and my sister-in- law is going over everything I needed to know for the next 6 hours. What Matthew can eat, drink, when to put him down for a nap and so on.  My brother says to me "Listen, I don't care if you let him smoke cigarettes and drink scotch, just keep him alive until we get home."  They leave and its me and my nephew for the afternoon.  So we're playing and having a great time.  It's time for his nap. I put him down and chill out for the next 2 hours. The 2 hours go by and I hear him waking up. I go to get him and he's looking up at me in his crib just smiling. So cute. We go downstairs and I look at him and say "Should we get a snack?" We go into the kitchen and open the fridge. This fridge was fully stocked with everything you could want. A jar in the back catches my attention. It's a jar of garlic pickles. I really like pickles and love garlic pickles. So I grab the jar and say to Matthew, "Let's find something for you to eat."  I go to the cabinet and pull out some little crackers for him to eat. I hand him a cracker and  bust open the jar of pickles. As I'm enjoying my 1st garlic pickle ( I say 1st because you know that I'm going to be knocking out a few of these babies), Matthew is giving me a look like "Hey, can I have a garlic pickle?"  Hmmm? I'm thinking "Can you give a baby a garlic pickle?".  I figure, he has teeth( a few at least), a pickle is a cucumber ( so it's a vegetable) and I'm only going to give him a little piece of one. What the hell? So I break off a little piece of the pickle and give it to him. He wolfs it down and is pointing to my pickle as to say "More please."  I give him another piece. Love this kid. I'm training him to eat with his uncle in the future. After about 15 minutes, I've eaten 6 pickles and this 18 month old baby has probably eaten the equivalent of 1 whole garlic pickle. Soon after, my brother and sister-in-law arrive home and all is good. I'm hanging with my brother downstairs and my sister-in-law and Matthew go upstairs.  All of a sudden my sister-in-law screams "HOLY ##$*$*#!!!!"  We run upstairs to Matthew's bedroom and there's Matthew on his changing table with a diaper off and my sister-in-law standing about 5 feet away with here fingers plugging her nose. As my brother and I walked into the room, the odor was so bad, it was like getting punched in the face with a dumpster filled with old garbage. Not to mention men in Hazmat suits should have been here to deal with the soiled diaper. My sister-in-law asks me "Did you give Matthew anything to eat today?" I hesitantly say "Well, he had some animal crackers and he tried some garlic pickle."  I might as well have told her that I fed him rat poison. She says pretty angrily "You let him try a garlic pickle! " I replied with probably not the best answer. "Well, actually I think he might have eaten an entire pickle." At that point my brother says "Danny, I think it's best you leave the room now" I leave and proceed to hear my brother get a full on verbal assault from his wife. I didn't hear everything but pretty sure I heard "Is he a total moron?" " What idiot feeds a baby a garlic pickle!" and "He's never babysitting Matthew again" (That one hurt).  My brother comes down and says to me "Listen, thanks for watching Matthew but it's probably a good time for you to hit the road" I said "No problem and I'm sorry about this" He replies "Hey, other than my kid's ass exploding with toxic waste and that I probably have to buy my wife something expensive so she'll talk to me again, I think it went well"  After time, I did end up babysitting my nephew again and to this day, if my brother and I are at a restaurant or store that has garlic pickles we just start laughing.