Tipsy Betsy
Saw a nanny get drunk by the pool today.
It wasn’t entirely her fault. The married couple she worked for got her drunk.
You see a lot of that here in Colombia. Not intoxicated babysitters, but couples or entire families going on vacations with their nanny. Caregiver? Childcare professional? Whatever we’re calling them this week.
Andrea and I were by the pool, watching our kids in the water when this couple with their three-year-old son and his -let’s go with “hired help”- arrived.
“It’s not that they are people with tons of money”, Andrea said to me, trying to explain the whole travelling with your nanny thing, “it’s that here in Colombia that sort of help is so damn cheap”.
“I’m sure they buy her a plane ticket and bring her along on their vacation because they haven’t a clue of anything to do with their own son”, I said to Andrea. “‘What does he eat?, what time does he go to bed?, does he shower by himself?, is he old enough to TikTok?, what’s that coming out of his nose?’… I bet those are all questions his parents have and can’t answer because they rely too much on their nanny, and now the kid is one diaper away from calling her ‘mommy’”.
We can always tell when people by the pool are tourists, because they share certain traits and ridiculous characteristics that give them away.
First of all, they’re as white as a nun’s tit. No tan line. No trucker’s tan. No peeling shoulders. Nothing that would indicate a previous encounter with sunlight. They have the pristine, untouched whiteness of a new iPhone charger.
Second, they can never figure out how the childproof pool gate works, and they’ll go at it like a monkey to a coconut.
Third, they have no idea of the numerous rules that the pool area has concerning its surroundings. Some of them include loud music, no beverages or foods inside the water, or excessively big inflatable beach balls or floaters.
Lastly and definitively, is that we’ve never seen you before. After almost five years living here, we know every cat, bat, rat, snake, toad or resident that greets us every morning on their way to dance practice.
Get Alfredo García’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But it’s that sorry, white meat of a body that really betrays them.
Another of the pool’s rules is that nothing made of glass is allowed past the pool fence. You want to drink beer from a glass bottle, you can either pour the beer into a plastic cup, which can be provided for you, or you can drink them outside the pool premises.
I mean I get it. The pool is the only place where everyone is barefoot, and you don’t want to cut your feet and have to go to the hospital for stitches because some idiot with an inflatable killer-whale knocked over a beer bottle by the side of the water.
So this white-ass couple, their three-year-old, and their… -let’s just call her Betsy, shall we?- showed up all smiles, like tourists who’d only just landed, carrying towels, sunblock, and a six-pack of Corona bottles.
It took the lifeguard two minutes to see the beers and go over to inform them of the rules concerning glass.
They were disappointed but understanding. I couldn’t hear what the couple said to each other, but they sent Betsy to sit in the shade by the toilets with the Corona’s, while they enjoyed themselves in the water and under the hot sun.
Business or pleasure, everyone comes to the Caribbean for fun, and Betsy was no exception. Since she’d been promoted from toddler duty to official chaperone of six bottles of beer, Betsy seemed determined to excel at the job.
A few minutes, and what apparently were a couple of beers later, tipsy Betsy went from screaming with excitement after spotting an iguana by the pool, to charging after it, with no concern whatsoever for her own safety as iguanas will not hesitate to whip you with their tail if harassed.
The giant reptile felt that the best escape route was through the gate and into the pool, scaring the family out of the water faster than they could scream Hijueputa.
My kids just watched as the iguana swiftly swam across and climbed a mango tree.
Meanwhile, Betsy, with a complete lack of elegance, went back for the last beer, which had been standing by the toilets, inevitably turning warm and flat. Her work ethic might have been questionable, but by Caribbean standards, she seemed to be the only one in the group getting the most out of the vacation.
__________________________________________________________
If this essay felt like a pleasant waste of time, consider this an invitation to make the same mistake again.
